Professor David Scheel, the presenter of a BBC2 documentary on Thursday, instantly brought to mind that American scientist in The Fast Show: bearded, bespectacled, softly spoken and willing to try an experiment just for the hell of it. A marine biologist in Alaska, Scheel has been studying octopuses (his own preferred plural, incidentally) for 25 years. But what, he whispered excitedly, ‘would I find out if I invited an octopus into my house?’
Well, one obvious answer we got from the starkly titled The Octopus in My House is that a TV film crew would be happy to show up and record what happened — which was essentially that he and his 16-year-old daughter Laurel spent a lot of time peering wonderingly into the animal’s tank.
Then again, there was plenty to wonder at. As Scheel pointed out more than once, all forms of intelligent life — birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, us — developed along the same evolutionary pathway. All, that is, except one: the three-hearted, literally blue-blooded and entirely boneless octopus, which has come up with its own, very different genetic solutions to successful living. And if you’ve ever doubted whether the ‘intelligent’ part applies to octopuses (or worse still, never given it much thought), Scheel was the man to put you right. With a mixture of passion and mild truculence — as if carrying on an argument with some off-screen octo-sceptics — he listed their achievements at some length. Not only are they among the 1 per cent of animals that use tools, but they can pass memory tests, plan for the future and solve the trickiest of mazes. Displaying an almost paternal pride, he also showed his own octopus Heidi unscrewing a jar-lid and, he insisted, attentively watching television.
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