Hi everyone! My name is Maya, and I’m a student at Vanderbilt studying Neuroscience.
The brain is one of the most fascinating yet lesser understood organs in the body. One of the weirdest things I’ve learned in my neuroscience classes has to do with the octopus brain. These mysterious creatures are known to be incredibly intelligent. In fact, octopuses can even open jars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kuAiuXezIU&t=63s), and one octopus was so smart that it could open a jar from the inside (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aHxWJEfeXg)!
In one of my neuroscience classes, my professor asked the class where we thought the octopus brain might be, and we all pointed to the head. Little did we know, the octopus head is actually where its stomach is located! Instead, the octopus brain is located right between its eyes and below the stomach.
So how does the octopus get food from its mouth past the brain to the stomach? In octopuses, the esophagus, which is a tube that carries our food from our mouths to our stomachs, actually runs through the brain. If an octopus eats a large creature, the esophagus will stretch out into the brain to get that creature down its esophagus.
Another fun fact about the octopus is that each of its 8 arms has a mini brain inside of it! Around 60% of octopus neurons, or the cells that make up the nervous system/brain, are found in the arms, allowing the octopus arms to act alone without the instruction of the brain.
So next time someone asks you about octopuses, you can tell them these really cool fun facts!
*Adapted from https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/how-the-octopus-got-its-smarts/