The common octopus (*Octopus vulgaris*) is a remarkable animal that have a lot of unique features only shared with fellow octopus species, but they are perhaps most known for their intelligence. In this post I want to talk a bit about their ability to learn from observation, which have never been seen in any invertebrate species before this. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Octopus_vulgaris_2.jpg
*A common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). Image is public domain*. 

Observational learning is really intuitive to us humans, so it might not seem like a big achievement, but it is generally not found in invertebrates. Basically they are capable of watching another octopus solve a problem, then replicate the problem themselves. This is just what humans do, especially children who uses this form of learning from adults.  It is also common in most other vertebrate species, such as in mammals and birds which observe the activities of their parents and try to replicate it. 

The paper about observational learning in octopuses is rather old, and was first published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992 by two Italian scientists. Despite this, it is still highly relevant in terms of studying intelligence and learning capabilities in octopuses and other invertebrates. 

The study was done by having two separate octopuses in two tanks, where one solved problems by selecting objects in different colors, and the correct object would award it with food. The other octopus observed this activity. Later the observing octopus was isolated, and had to solve the problem himself. The scientists then observed that the octopus would solve the problem in the same manner to get the food. The control group (the octopuses which had to solve it without any observational learning) spend longer time to figure out how to get the food. 

The project went for 5 days straight without any significant errors, which goes a long way to prove that octopuses are able to use observation to learn new skills. In more recent times, this study has been replicated, which further strengthen the validity of the paper. 


## Bonus octopus funfact
 A lot of people write octopi for plural octopus, but an –i ending is generally used in Latin, and not in Greek which is the origin language of the word octopus. However, both forms of the plural octopus is accepted to use. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Octopus2.jpg
*[Image by Albert Kok, posted with the GNU Free Documentation License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Octopus2.jpg)*. 

## Sources
[Here is the original paper from 1992](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/256/5056/545). 

If you find this cool, then do a Google search for the species. The common octopus is a really fascination animal, and has a lot of really unique features which is interesting to take a look at! 

## About the author
Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my girlfriend, our newborn son, and our two dogs, one of which is seen wearing a bow tie in the profile picture! 

I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests. 

[<img src="https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgsafe.org/dd8bd8753d.gif">](https://steemit.com/@valth)