Lesson 2 Explore Wildlife Wonders
The Mind of an Octopus
Here is an animal with poison like a snake, a ____ and pointed mouth like a bird, and ink like a pen.
It can weigh as much as an ____ human and stretch as long as a car.
Yet it can ____ its boneless body through a hole the size of an orange.
It can change color and ____, and it can taste with its skin.
This animal is called an octopus.
The octopus looks so alien to the people of the West that it has caused ____ or even horror in them.
The dislike or horror ____ create the image of an octopus as an evil creature living in the deep sea.
For ____, the Kraken, a sea monster in old Icelandic tales, looks just like an enormous octopus.
Another example is Ursula, the sea witch featured in the famous tale, The Little ____.
To this day, it is ____ for us to imagine that octopuses and humans share any meaningful similarities.
During the past few decades, however, scientists have begun to find ____ and more similarities between octopuses and humans.
One of the most interesting ones is intelligence. Octopuses are ____.
The ____ evidence is their ability to camouflage themselves.
An octopus can change its color, pattern, and ____, and the changes are carried out almost instantly.
In terms of speed and the diversity of ____, no other animal can rival octopuses.
Even chameleons ____ utilize only a handful of fixed patterns.
The main purpose of these ____ is to avoid detection by their hunters or their prey.
When an ____ encounters its hunter or prey, it must decide very quickly which color, pattern, and texture to choose.
Such a ____ implies that it has gained sufficient knowledge of the surrounding animals and applies it to survive.
To acquire knowledge and apply it for a particular purpose is a sure ____ of intelligence.
Another sign of the intelligence
Another sign of the ____ of the octopus is its use of tools.
In the lab, octopuses use tools to get ____ rewards.
In the wild, they use stones to create walls to ____ the entrances to their homes.
They use not only ____ but anything they can find to protect themselves.
The most impressive example of ____ using tools came in 2009 in Indonesia.
A few octopuses were found to collect coconut ____.
They cleaned the shells with bursts of water, carried them to a new location, and ____ them as a shelter.
____ with the shells under their bodies forced them to walk slowly along the sea floor.
This made the octopuses more exposed to ____.
But it seems that they were willing to ____ that risk for greater future protection.
The scientists who discovered the behavior argue that this is clear evidence of octopuses using ____.
Octopuses’ use of ____ can be found in their love of toys and puzzles, too.
They are curious about new ____, and do not like getting bored.
That is why aquariums try to come up with ideas to keep their octopuses ____.
Some aquariums hide ____ inside a big doll and let the octopus break up the toy to get the food.
Others offer plastic building ____ for their octopuses to play with.
Our knowledge about the octopus
Our knowledge about the octopus is ____ very limited.
Thanks to the efforts of scientists, ____, it is expanding year by year.
One of the most ____ new findings about the octopus is that it seems to have feelings.
Of course, it is impossible for us to know exactly ____ they feel, but a few of their changes in skin color seem to be linked to their feelings.
For example, a giant ____ octopus that turns red seems to be excited, while it is white when it is relaxed.
An octopus ____ with a difficult puzzle often undergoes several rapid changes in color.
The octopus seems to be worried that it may not ____ the problem.
Few scientists today deny that ____ are intelligent animals.
Perhaps it is time that we stopped thinking of ____ as alien creatures and acknowledged them as intelligent animals like us.
There is still so much we do not ____ about the octopus.
Aren’t you ____ about what is inside their mind?