Are octopuses just like us?

The publicity frenzy over Paul the octopus, who accurately predicted the results of the World Cup by opening boxes labelled with team colours, has concealed something much more interesting than his apparent psychic powers. Here is an animal with a third of his nervous system outside his brain and no central spinal column who is nevertheless able to open man-made jars and boxes. This ‘lower form of life’, as we might once have called an invertebrate, can use tools, navigate mazes, recognise the humans that feed him, and make use of landmarks in planning a route.

Scientific interest in octopus intelligence is part of a quiet revolution in animal behaviour science. For generations, those studying animals were either ethologists, busy noting instinctive behaviour patterns in wild animals, or behaviourists, putting rats and pigeons into little boxes and studying how they responded either to punishing electric shocks or food pellet rewards.