Do octopuses get smarter with age?

[Rudiger]

I put a crab in a small glass jar that has a bottleneck with a one inch opening. I was hoping the octopus could figure out how to crawl in the top and get the hermit crab. He pounces on the jar but when the glass stops him he goes back and hides on a rock, waits a few seconds, and then attacks again. It appears that he thinks if he sneaks up on the crab then the glass wont be there. One time I pointed the opening at him so when he attacked he landed right on the opening. He crawled inside and grabbed the crab. But if I dont point the opening at him he cant figure it out. His problem is that he focuses on the crab too much and doesnt bother searching the glass for a way to get in. Do octopuses get smarter with age? Maybe he cant figure it out because he is too young?

This morning I put the hermit crab on the sand and put the jar over it. The octopus did figured out how to dig under the glass and pull out the hermit crab.

 

[OctoMonkey]

Hi Pat,
hows things?

They dont get smarter they just have more experience.

The learned behaviour in a ceph is totally learned from experience.... the more times he/she has to figure out the bottle thing the quicker he'll/she'll get at it. So just keep going with the bottle idea and it'll get faster at getting inside.

It will be confusing for the octopus to jump at a crab it can see and not touch it. Thats why it will slink back and then try again... I would leave it alone and let it figure out there is an opening if it looks hard enough

C

 

[cephalopoder]

I did this experiment yesterday. I do it with every octo and I still have not seen it figured out yet. Yesterday I took a 8" x 2" clear acrylic display tube with push in end caps and placed a live fiddler and a crayfish into the tube and capped it.I then filled it with tank water and recapped it and placed it on the bottom of my bimac tank. I would say my bimac is about 5-6 months old. It attacked the tube several times and was occupied by it for a while. It soon gave up not able to smell the food only see it. I decided I would drill a .25" hole in one end cap. I put the expirement back into the tank and waited. After some time it found the hole. It could reach in and grab the crayfish but not pull it out. It never figured out how to get the end caps off.
What the octopus did learn to do was reach in and pull the pray close to the hole. It then moved its beak to the hole and bit the crayfish though the small hole. After its saliva broke down the protein, it siped its meal though the hole. It did this with the crab too.

 

[goodman770]

Along this same line, I have put very fast fish in my tank for the Octo to eat. Zebra danios, for those of you who are old school. Anyway, I put 3 of them in there. After several weak attempts at hunting them down with speed, within a minute or so he had devised a plan. And after snagging the first one, the rest came very easy so he did learn. He would blend in with the rocks and let them swim by him. His second method was to wait till they were directly above him and swim up quickly from an angle they couldn't see him and snagging them with a sucker.
I have done several other experiments along this line. I have not established that he is "thinking" how to solve these problems. However, I can say that once an answer is figured out...he is all business and will repeat that behavior to his advantage. Thinking...maybe, maybe not. Learning...you bet!!!
Bill