Octopuses may have a hidden talent once thought to belong only to birds and mammals: using mirrors to understand the world around them.
A new study published in Current Biology found that California two-spot octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate food hidden outside their direct line of sight. After training, the animals correctly navigated to the reward about 73 percent of the time.
Researchers taught three octopuses that what they saw in a mirror reflected something behind them. Instead of attacking the reflection itself, the animals learned to turn around and head toward the actual location of the hidden reward. Some even found creative shortcuts by climbing over barriers rather than taking the longer route.
Until now, researchers had only documented this kind of mirror-assisted spatial problem-solving in vertebrates, such as certain mammals and birds. The findings suggest octopuses, despite being separated from humans by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, may h
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