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    Short WaveWhat Octopus Minds May Tell Us About Aliens
    14 min

    What Octopus Minds May Tell Us About Aliens

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    Octopuses! They are escape artists, they camouflage in all kinds of surroundings, and they are incredibly intelligent creatures--and that intelligence evolved completely separately from humans'. That separate evolution makes them the perfect animal to study for Dominic Sivitilli, a PhD candidate in astrobiology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Washington.

    Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) camera person Stephani Gordon visited Dominic's lab to learn about octopus intelligence, and how their arms and suckers can basically think for themselves. Aaron talks to co-host Emily Kwong about how studying octopuses can provide insight into how aliens might think.

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    © NPRLength 14 min1 April 2022ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic

    Introducing Short Wave

    Introducing Short Wave

    This is an episodic podcast, so you can listen to it in any order, but episode one is a great place to start.

    Listen to episode one here
    11+ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic1 April 2022© NPR

    Octopuses! They are escape artists, they camouflage in all kinds of surroundings, and they are incredibly intelligent creatures--and that intelligence evolved completely separately from humans'. That separate evolution makes them the perfect animal to study for Dominic Sivitilli, a PhD candidate in astrobiology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Washington.

    Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) camera person Stephani Gordon visited Dominic's lab to learn about octopus intelligence, and how their arms and suckers can basically think for themselves. Aaron talks to co-host Emily Kwong about how studying octopuses can provide insight into how aliens might think.

    To see the octopuses in action, watch the video story Aaron and Stephani produced for OPB's nature show Oregon Field Guide here: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/03/29/want-to-study-how-aliens-might-think-look-to-the-octopus/

    Is there another sea creature you want to learn more about? E-mail the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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