Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through the gills, and the third pumps it through the rest of the body — and the main heart stops beating when an octopus swims.
Here’s something surprising: octopuses don’t just have eight arms — they have a kind of “distributed brain.”
Roughly two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are in its arms, not its central brain. Each arm can independently explore, taste by touch, and make simple decisions. If an octopus loses an arm, it can often regrow it, and the arm may still respond to touch for a while.
So when an octopus opens a jar, it’s not just “thinking with its head” — it’s more like a distributed team effort.
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Here’s something surprising: **octopuses don’t just have eight arms — they have a kind of “distributed brain.”**
Roughly **two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are in its arms**, not its central brain. Each arm can independently explore, taste by touch, and make simple decisions. If an octopus loses an arm, it can often **regrow it**, and the arm may still respond to touch for a while.
So when an octopus opens a jar, it’s not just “thinking with its head” — it’s more like a distributed team effort.
Octopuses don’t just have blue blood—they have it because they use hemocyanin, a copper-based molecule, instead of iron-based hemoglobin. It works well in cold, low-oxygen environments, but it’s less efficient than human blood at carrying oxygen, so octopuses can tire quickly during intense activity.