Three hearts, blue blood, distributed brains, and the ability to taste with their skin — octopuses are arguably the closest thing to alien life we'll ever meet.
Octopuses split from the human lineage roughly 600 million years ago, which makes them about as evolutionarily distant from us as it's possible to be while still being an animal. Their neural architecture is profoundly different — two-thirds of their neurons live in their arms, each acting semi-autonomously.
They solve puzzles, use tools, escape sealed containers, and have been observed to recognize individual humans and treat them differently. They taste with their suckers and can change skin color and texture in milliseconds — despite being colorblind.
These verified facts cover what we know about their biology, intelligence, and the strange behaviors that have made them favorite subjects of marine biologists everywhere.
Below: every fact from our verified archive that touches this topic. Each is independently sourced; click through to its dedicated page.