Whenever I visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, I have to pry myself away from the cuttlefish, nautilus and octopus exhibits. The intelligence, curiosity, and unique body plans of these cephalopods mesmerize me. So it is a big thrill to see these creatures in their natural habitats.....
Can you think of an animal living today whose relatives, some of them gigantic, ruled the seas for hundreds of millions of years – but then became extinct along with the dinosaurs? This survivor, the chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius), is little changed from ancestors that flourished more than 400 million years ago.
Did you know that complex behavior and intelligence developed on two very different evolutionary branches? In a fascinating book, Peter Godfrey-Smith* writes that the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien is an octopus.
