The punk rock life of cephalopods

[THEME MUSIC] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora, and you’re listening to Science Friday.

In case you missed the memo, it is Cephalopod Week, the most wonderful time of the year. And if you’re a longtime listener or just an ocean nerd, you might be thinking, oh, that’s cute, but how much more is there, really to learn about squid, octopus, and cuttlefish? Well, strap in, because I think this conversation is going to blow you right out of the water.

These soft-bodied creatures, it turns out, they have a hard edge. Have you heard of octopus death spirals? Cephalopod cannibalism?

Here to take us into the deep end are two cephperts. Heather Judkins, who’s a Marine ecologist and taxonomist at the University of South Florida, and neuroethologist Yan Wang, who studies the brains and behaviors of cephalopods at the University of Washington, Seattle. Thank you, both, for being here.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Thanks for having us.

YAN WANG: Thanks so much for having us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Happy Cephalopod Week.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Thanks.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you celebrate?

YAN WANG: What’s funny this year is that our lab is actually getting a shipment of octopuses on Thursday, so that’ll be really exciting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: On World Octopus Day–

YAN WANG: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –the very day this podcast comes out, the day before this goes on broadcast. How do you even get a shipment of octopuses? What does that look like?

YAN WANG: Yeah, different labs, different researchers do it different ways. And here, in Washington, we work with a collector who’s out in California, because that’s where the species of octopus that we study lives. And so he is able to get octopuses for us by diving for them. And then they get shipped overnight FedEx in their dens. And we’re there waiting for them bright and early in the morning to acclimate them to our system.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They get shipped FedEx. What does it look like when you open the package? Is it like, an aquarium? A Tupperware? What should I picture?

YAN WANG: Yeah, they come in double plastic baggies, essentially. And, yeah, they’ve got lots of water in there. They’ve got their homes, plenty of oxygen. Yeah, so they come in a big Styrofoam box, and then an aquarium baggie.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow, OK. We have to talk about death spirals right off the bat. This is something you study, Yan, right?

YAN WANG: Yeah, that’s right.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What is it? What’s an octopus death spiral?

YAN WANG: Yeah, so for the majority of octopus species that we know about on this Earth, something really unique happens after they mate and reproduce, which is that they undergo these really dramatic behavioral changes that always ultimately lead to their death. And these changes are really striking from how they normally would behave.

So octopuses are really voracious predators. During this time, they stop eating. The females are primarily taking care of their eggs. But as they get closer and closer to death, these females will abandon their eggs, often, or spend a lot of time outside of their pot.

They will eat their arm tips. They will rip skin off of their mantles. Oftentimes, they engage in behaviors that will rub the skin or damage the skin on their body. And all of this inevitably leads to their death.

And while other animals also die after reproduction, this is a process called semelparity, what’s really unique about octopuses is that it’s a part of their nervous system that controls this, and it appears to be reversible. So if that part of the brain is not functioning, then these behaviors and this death spiral doesn’t happen.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. Why would this be the way they meet their end?

YAN WANG: I think why questions are really– they’re so interesting because you can tug at them forever. So I don’t have an answer to why, because it can be really hard to test and falsify why questions. But, I’ll say this. One thing we know about is that cephalopods are highly, highly cannibalistic.

So, for example, young octopus hatchlings will, if they’re close to each other, will often cannibalize each other. And so, researchers in the ’70s have put forth this idea that this is a very effective means of population control, to ensure that the previous generation dies off, and that their offspring are able to grow up and survive.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is really changing my perspective on cephalopods. I think of them as like, majestic. And, I don’t know. This is very punk rock.

Related to living hard and dying young, we got this question from a listener.

TOM: Hi, this is Tom from Anchorage, Alaska. I have a cephalopod question. We’ve all heard how intelligent these animals are, yet most of them seem to have short lifespans. Isn’t that unusual in the animal kingdom to invest so much evolution in a big and complex brain, but have the animal not live very long? Curious.

HEATHER JUDKINS: So in the world of cephalopods, they’re also part of the mollusca phylum. The mollusca group over time have evolved to get a smaller or reduced shell and in some cases, like octopus, no shell at all. So over evolutionary time, one of the theories is because they’ve had to lose their shell, they now become this muscly, meaty treat so they’ve had to come up with these different strategies to successfully grow, reproduce, and continue on the species without getting eaten along the way.

They’ve had to adapt these fast strategies for growth and a short lifespan because of possibly, predator-prey interactions and what type of environment they’re in. But I don’t know. Yen, you might have more to add to that.

YAN WANG: I think that’s really beautiful. I love how you described them as meaty treats, as well.

It is true that typically, what we see across animal lineages is that animals that have a higher brain-to-body mass ratio tend to live longer, so we think about whales or parrots or things like that. And so it is really interesting that octopuses and other cephalopods stand out in this way, for their short lifespans. It really accentuates, to me, both, not only how unique their death is or their death processes are, but how unique their lives are, as well.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Can I tee up another listener question for you both?

HEATHER JUDKINS: Of course.

YAN WANG: Please.

ANGIE: Hi, my name is Angie. I’m from Houston, Texas. I heard from somewhere that octopuses have donut-shaped brains and that their esophagus goes through their brain. Is this true? And if so, what would happen if an octopus were to swallow something really large? Would it cause any brain damage? Thank you. Bye.

YAN WANG: Great question.

HEATHER JUDKINS: It is. I talk with my students all the time. Yan, you want to take a first stab at it?

YAN WANG: Oh, yeah?

HEATHER JUDKINS: Go for it.

YAN WANG: Yeah, sure. So, octopuses, cephalopods, at large, have what we could consider a donut-shaped brain. So there’s what is called a supra esophageal brain mass and a subesophageal brain mass. So there’s a part of the brain that goes above the esophagus, and in other animals, the trachea, and then a part that goes under it.

So yes, it is absolutely, true that the esophagus goes right through the brain, which is something that’s very different from ours. And at the same time, the octopus has some ways of protecting against eating something super large that would cause damage to that.

So, for example, the ways that they eat are very, very slow. And they’re using their beaks to drill into hard-shelled food objects, which takes a really long time. They are injecting toxins into their food. So they are very, I would say, careful, conscientious eaters. And there’s, of–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Cannot relate, but.

YAN WANG: Yeah. And there’s also space within their anatomy that allows for kind of natural expansion of the esophagus. Yeah. Yeah, Heather, what do you talk about with your students?

HEATHER JUDKINS: So we talk about just that, how this anatomy and structure is there. And then I have been working on deep sea squid and octopus and their gut contents. So I am interested in what they’re eating and how it gets down there.

If you open up a fish and you look at its stomach, you could see bones and scales and things. You could probably identify different animals. But when you open up a squid stomach, it’s like a milkshake.

You can’t see anything because, the way Yan just described, they’re eating everything, and they’re chomping everything super small. And they have these radula, which are these little rasping teeth, that they use to help get their food super small. So there’s no chance that, well, very little chance, that they would eat something too big to go through that esophagus that runs through the brain. It is pretty amazing that this has worked so well for them, because it seems a little different than the other animals we’ve studied.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I have to take a break, but when we come back, we have to talk about giant squid encounters. Stay with us.

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Heather, let’s talk about your close, close encounter with the giant squid. Give us a short version of the story and, yeah, where you were–

HEATHER JUDKINS: Yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –what you saw.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Yeah, so, thanks. We have done a lot of work with giant squid around all of the oceans in the United States and beyond. We have giant squid that we have found floating at the surface here in the Gulf, right off of Florida, where I am. And I have dissected, probably, 10 to 12 different giant squid over time.

But the coolest experience that we’ve had was in 2019. We were in the Gulf offshore on a research vessel, and the whole point of the cruise, it was a NOAA Ocean Exploration cruise, and we were looking at bioluminescence down to about 2,500 meters.

And one of the tools we’re using was created by Edie Widder who is amazing at what she does in this, and this little eye in the sea, it’s a autonomous camera system. It has a little LED light that shows like a jellyfish in distress, and it can capture video and images. And it floats around for about 30 hours at that time. And then we would pull it up, we would look at all the video, and see what came to interact with the device.

So I got woken up out of a nap, which is precious on research vessels because you never have enough sleep. And I run up there because they’re like–

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s got to be important when you get woken up.

HEATHER JUDKINS: But yeah, that’s what I said. I’m like, this better be a very important reason, which I’ll get up, sure. I can fall back asleep pretty quick.

So I go up there, and we go into the lab, and we’re looking, and sure enough. This squid comes to check out the jellyfish, and you see the arms and tentacles come in. It seems to be investigating, and then it’s like, I’m out of here.

So we could tell from the video, there’s only the squid club, which is what they use to capture food and thing. It’s pretty unique among all these different species. And there was only one other species that has a tentacle that would be long. And this squid, which was big. It was probably a 13-foot squid, I think, we estimated at the end.

So, from that video, we can establish that it was the first time giant squid has been seen in situ in US waters with Edie’s camera system, which was amazing. We were very excited about it. It was fun. It was definitely worth getting up from a nap, for sure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is that a goosebumps moment? What is that like?

HEATHER JUDKINS: Yeah, it is, because everybody works so hard on getting all of these tools and technology to try to see what’s down in our deep ocean. We don’t know what’s in the deep ocean. Very little has been studied. And especially, this mid-water stuff, the water that you get to, to get down to the bottom. So this giant squid is just cruising around, checking things out, living its life, and we were just very fortunate enough to see it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yan, I see you nodding.

YAN WANG: I just feel like I would have cried if that happened, because I think there’s just something so marvelous about both the ocean environment and how different that is from the habitats that we are so used to navigating all the time, and encountering such an interesting animal out and about on its business. And an animal of that scale, too. To me, it engenders this feeling of like looking out at the night sky and seeing all the stars and feeling really small. And I think– yeah, I think, I would have just burst into tears.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Oh, yeah, it’s humbling. I do deep sea research. I’ve been working with a deep sea consortium group, DEEPEND Consortium, since 2010, and so we’re investigating this mid-water all the time. We’re sending nets down. We’re sending different tools and technologies down. And in the almost 18, 20 years that we’ve been looking down there, this is the first time we’ve ever remotely seen that. And I’ve been in that space for years. So I think, it’s super exciting that there’s just so much still to find down there.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Let’s go back to the ceph line because listeners had a lot of questions.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Let’s do it.

LYNN: Hi, my name is Lynn. I’m calling from California, and my question is this. What does research say is the level of intellect that each type of cephalopod has? That is, how smart are they? Thanks.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Rank ’em.

HEATHER JUDKINS: I don’t think we can.

YAN WANG: Battle Royale.

HEATHER JUDKINS: So I think Lynn’s question is great because there’s a lot to examine there. We have human biases. They are intelligent by way of cognition and learning and things like that. They don’t form social groups. That’s a part of an intelligent and cognition thing, so that’s a thing they don’t have.

But I think, it’s tricky. I think, yes, we can say they are smart. They can do this, this, and this. But to rank in intelligence, I don’t think we’ve looked at squid like this. For example, they don’t do as well in experimental and lab settings. So I think the research just hasn’t gotten there to a ranking of sorts, which would be fun, but I don’t know that we could do it, yet.

Yan, other thoughts on that? I’m sure, you have much more to think about on that one.

YAN WANG: Yeah, I was like, oh, maybe, Heather can just take this one because I almost always try to skirt these questions, for many of the reasons that you just mentioned, Heather. And not because I don’t think they’re worthwhile questions. I just think that they are almost impossible to answer. And I think that they reveal more about us as the question askers than the animals that we are interested in.

So any definition of intelligence or intellect that we can think of, whether it is problem-solving or integrating information from the environment, or planning ahead, or changing course based off of new information, so one, as Heather mentioned, our judgment and assessment of that is going to be biased by our own experiences as humans. So, I think, it’s a really fascinating thing to think about because I think these questions, what they emphasize, to me, is that there’s something very curious about cephalopods that it promotes a sense of wanting to connect with them somehow when we are observing them.

And I think, to me, what it emphasizes is like one, that the behaviors of these animals are fantastic, and we should definitely be investigating them. And two, in an era of where we’re so fascinated with artificial intelligence, for example, machine learning, and things like that, well, actually, maybe, we can pause a little and look at the living beings around us that are already like this exemplars of what alternate forms of being can be, and see what we can learn from there.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s such a lovely thought. This is such a fascinating conversation. Thank you, both, for taking time to talk to us today.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Happy to do so. It’s always great.

YAN WANG: Yeah, it’s so fun to listen to the questions.

HEATHER JUDKINS: Yeah, listener questions are always good for me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re always the best. Yan Wang is an assistant professor of psychology and biology at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Heather Judkins is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida in Saint Petersburg.

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This episode was produced by Imaan Moin and Kathleen Davis. And if you have questions or comments about this or any other Science story, leave us a voicemail. 877-4-SCIFRI. We always love hearing from you.

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Until next time, I’m Flora Lichtman.

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