Israeliscientists discover why octopuses don’t get into a tangle

A Hebrew University research team says the mollusc’s skin
detection system could advance bio-inspired robot design.

Ever wonder why an octopus doesn’t get all tangled up? Well, it turns out scientists have long sought the answers. Now a research team in Jerusalem is reporting that the conundrum actually has a very simple reasoning. Unlike humans, the walnut-sized brain of octopuses is not always aware of the mollusc’s arm locations. Yet, thanks to a chemical produced by octopus skin, the arms prevent their suckers from sucking when in contact with one another.
“We were surprised that nobody before us had noticed this very robust and easy-to-detect phenomenon,” says Dr. Guy Levy, who carried out the research with co-first author Dr. Nir Nesher in the Department of Neurobiology at the Hebrew University’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences. “We were entirely surprised by the brilliant and simple solution of the octopus to this potentially very complicated problem.” Instead of calculating when and where its arms will move, the research shows that the octopuses avoid contact among their limbs from go.

Untangling science:
Dr. Nir Nesher,
Dr. Guy Levy
and Prof. Benny Hochner
at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem (Photo: Guy Levy)

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