A new study has uncovered the truth about the alien in our oceans: the octopus. Long has it been thought that this strange creature could be something other than an Earthling, but nobody can confirm this, yet this newest research moves us a step closer.
H.G. Wells would be proud if he know what an expert in cephalopods his grandson would become. The late Martin Wells speculated at one point in his life that octopuses might well be beings who came to Earth from another planet in the very distant past of our planet.
In fact, the octopus is so intelligent, it has an immensely large brain, and it can even tell the difference between rocks and clams. To do this, Martin Wells discovered back in 1959, it uses its tentacles and suckers to taste what it touches, eventually developing an elaborate mental imagery of its surrounding according to each object’s taste.
This research and not only has pushed the laws in the UK to give the octopus special protection, on account of the fact that it may actually be much, much smarter than we believe. Therefrom, anyone wanting to perform experiments on the cephalopod needs a special authorization and a license to go forth in his or her research.
After all this paperwork is done, the scientists must also make sure the tanks in which he puts his octopuses are extremely well secured. It has been demonstrated countless times that the octopus is a master of escapism, being able to even get out of a tightly sealed jar by using the extremities of its tentacles to unscrew the lid. Pretty astonishing, isn’t it?
The newest research was an international project to sequence the genome of the octopus. The experiment was led by University of Chicago’s Clifton Ragsdale. The scientist maintains that the octopus is extremely different from all other animals on record, and even from other mollusks, as it has eight prehensile members, and is capable to solve basic equations and puzzles.
The researchers managed to look at the octopus’s entire genetic making, as they sequenced the whole of 2.7 billion letters within the creature’s genetic code. What they found was that it was so alien, it had 10,000 genes in excess to the number of genes we humans have. So, theoretically, it is more evolutionarily advanced than we are. Hundreds of these genes cannot be found on any other living organism on the face of the Earth. If that alone is not unfathomable, I don’t know what is.
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