On February 23, 2021, Costello the octopus’ abnormal behavior was captured on camera inside his tank at Rockefeller University. The behavior could possibly be a nightmare about an unknown sea creature that he had fought when he was younger.
Costello napped inside his tank when suddenly he began to curl his arms over his body and spin at extreme speeds. Afterward, he squirted ink everywhere inside his tank. A scientist that passed by, Eric Angel Ramos, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, saw Costello try to strangle a pipe in his cage, almost like he murdered it.
Ramos and his team of scientists were confused, but they speculated that the octopus was having a nightmare. They shared this idea and other possible reasons on the bioRxiv website, which is a free online archive for unpublished preprints for science.
Almost all the behaviors Costello exhibited inside his cage can be found in wild octopuses, such as when they defend themselves from predators.
Carolyn Wilke, journalist for the New York Times, writes that Dr. Magnasco, a biophysicist at Rockefeller University, thought that Costello’s behavior was very similar to a dream. “To Dr. Magnasco, the behaviors exhibited in Costello’s longest spell evoked the acting out of a dream. The curling of arms over his body looked like a defensive posture, he said. In the footage, the animal is seen perhaps trying to make himself look larger, and then he tries an evasive maneuver — inking. When he fails to escape, it seems like Costello seeks to subdue a threat by strangling the pipe, Dr. Magnasco said, adding, ‘This is the sequence of a fight.’”
In 2021, scientists have split up octopus sleep stages into “active” and “quiet” sleep. In “active” sleep, octopuses change their skin color and texture. However, in “quiet” sleep, the animals were still, changing their skin to pale and contracting their eye pupils to slits.
This is very similar to a human’s sleep stages: REM and non-REM. In REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep, humans constantly move their eyes while sleeping. This is the session in which most dreams occur. In non-REM sleep, a person is in deep sleep and all their organs relax.
Since a human’s rapid eye blinking stage is the stage where most dreams occur, it is possible that an octopus could be dreaming while their skin color and texture transforms.
Over the past month, Costello and another octopus, Abbot, were seen having “nightmarish” behavior three more times.
However, Costello’s behavior could be linked to something else: he had stomach parasites. It might have been the parasite that created problems in his digestive system, or the parasite could have infiltrated his nervous system.
Costello died about six weeks after his experience, so his behavior could have been senescence, which is the breakdown of cells in a living animal’s body.
“The arm movements in the video seemed more like evidence of a lack of motor control, which is associated with senescence, rather than anti-predator behavior,” said Robyn Crook, a neurobiologist at San Francisco State University.
It will be very difficult to prove that Costello’s episodes were dreams because we are unable to record the brain activity of a sleeping octopus. “Where do you put electrodes on an animal that has no shape?” Marcelo Magnasco, also a neuroscientist and biophysicist at Rockefeller University, asked.
Dr. Gutnick, a neuroethologist at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, and Dr. Kuba, her colleague, have conducted their own research recording electric signals from an octopus’s brain. “In their own research, Dr. Gutnick and Dr. Kuba recently recorded electrical signals from an octopus’s brain. That opens the possibility that researchers could snoop on octopuses’ brain activity during sleep and maybe connect behaviors and body patterning during sleep with shifts of brainwaves to study processes linked to dreaming,” Carolyn Wilke writes in The New York Times.
However, this is not necessarily relevant to Costello’s behavior, Dr. Gutnick said, adding, “You have to show that they have dreams before you think about nightmares.”
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/science/octopus-nightmare-dream.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock
https://www.livescience.com/animals/octopuses/watch-an-octopus-waking-up-from-what-scientists-think-could-have-been-a-nightmare
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopuses-may-have-vivid-nightmares-video-suggests-180982248/
Costello napped inside his tank when suddenly he began to curl his arms over his body and spin at extreme speeds. Afterward, he squirted ink everywhere inside his tank. A scientist that passed by, Eric Angel Ramos, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, saw Costello try to strangle a pipe in his cage, almost like he murdered it.
Ramos and his team of scientists were confused, but they speculated that the octopus was having a nightmare. They shared this idea and other possible reasons on the bioRxiv website, which is a free online archive for unpublished preprints for science.
Almost all the behaviors Costello exhibited inside his cage can be found in wild octopuses, such as when they defend themselves from predators.
Carolyn Wilke, journalist for the New York Times, writes that Dr. Magnasco, a biophysicist at Rockefeller University, thought that Costello’s behavior was very similar to a dream. “To Dr. Magnasco, the behaviors exhibited in Costello’s longest spell evoked the acting out of a dream. The curling of arms over his body looked like a defensive posture, he said. In the footage, the animal is seen perhaps trying to make himself look larger, and then he tries an evasive maneuver — inking. When he fails to escape, it seems like Costello seeks to subdue a threat by strangling the pipe, Dr. Magnasco said, adding, ‘This is the sequence of a fight.’”
In 2021, scientists have split up octopus sleep stages into “active” and “quiet” sleep. In “active” sleep, octopuses change their skin color and texture. However, in “quiet” sleep, the animals were still, changing their skin to pale and contracting their eye pupils to slits.
This is very similar to a human’s sleep stages: REM and non-REM. In REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep, humans constantly move their eyes while sleeping. This is the session in which most dreams occur. In non-REM sleep, a person is in deep sleep and all their organs relax.
Since a human’s rapid eye blinking stage is the stage where most dreams occur, it is possible that an octopus could be dreaming while their skin color and texture transforms.
Over the past month, Costello and another octopus, Abbot, were seen having “nightmarish” behavior three more times.
However, Costello’s behavior could be linked to something else: he had stomach parasites. It might have been the parasite that created problems in his digestive system, or the parasite could have infiltrated his nervous system.
Costello died about six weeks after his experience, so his behavior could have been senescence, which is the breakdown of cells in a living animal’s body.
“The arm movements in the video seemed more like evidence of a lack of motor control, which is associated with senescence, rather than anti-predator behavior,” said Robyn Crook, a neurobiologist at San Francisco State University.
It will be very difficult to prove that Costello’s episodes were dreams because we are unable to record the brain activity of a sleeping octopus. “Where do you put electrodes on an animal that has no shape?” Marcelo Magnasco, also a neuroscientist and biophysicist at Rockefeller University, asked.
Dr. Gutnick, a neuroethologist at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, and Dr. Kuba, her colleague, have conducted their own research recording electric signals from an octopus’s brain. “In their own research, Dr. Gutnick and Dr. Kuba recently recorded electrical signals from an octopus’s brain. That opens the possibility that researchers could snoop on octopuses’ brain activity during sleep and maybe connect behaviors and body patterning during sleep with shifts of brainwaves to study processes linked to dreaming,” Carolyn Wilke writes in The New York Times.
However, this is not necessarily relevant to Costello’s behavior, Dr. Gutnick said, adding, “You have to show that they have dreams before you think about nightmares.”
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/science/octopus-nightmare-dream.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock
https://www.livescience.com/animals/octopuses/watch-an-octopus-waking-up-from-what-scientists-think-could-have-been-a-nightmare
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopuses-may-have-vivid-nightmares-video-suggests-180982248/
