Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Over the years, we have come to appreciate that octopuses are incredibly clever. They can successfully move through mazes, get themselves out of containers, and use tools. They even have
a great track record of escaping from their tanks! It turns out that octopuses are even smarter than we think – and genomics is teaching us exactly how intelligent they are and perhaps why!
In a paper published in Cell last year, scientists found that when octopuses are in warmer versus
cooler temperatures, they actually edit their RNA differently to survive!
When octopuses edit their RNA because of the different temperatures, they actually change the proteins that they make, so a gene that codes for one protein can actually end up being a slightly
different protein – depending on the temperature of the water surrounding the Octopus.
And that’s just WAY COOL!
Over the years, we have come to appreciate that octopuses are incredibly clever. They can successfully move through mazes, get themselves out of containers, and use tools. They even have
a great track record of escaping from their tanks! It turns out that octopuses are even smarter than we think – and genomics is teaching us exactly how intelligent they are and perhaps why!
In a paper published in Cell last year, scientists found that when octopuses are in warmer versus
cooler temperatures, they actually edit their RNA differently to survive!
When octopuses edit their RNA because of the different temperatures, they actually change the proteins that they make, so a gene that codes for one protein can actually end up being a slightly
different protein – depending on the temperature of the water surrounding the Octopus.
And that’s just WAY COOL!
