Most species of shallow water octopuses appear to be pretty
solitary animals. They live in dens and venture out from them to
hunt or find mates; defending these dens and getting busy are
the only social interaction that many species of octopuses are
observed to have in the wild. I like to think of them as the
curmudgeons of the reef environment, keeping to themselves
because that’s just the way they like it. It might surprise us,
then, to learn that Elena Tricarico and her coworkers, working
out of the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, just published a paper
arguing the octopuses (of the species Octopus vulgaris), can
recognize other individual octopuses. While it’s clear that this
ability might be important to more social cephalopods (like
squids, which form schools), what good could it do for a species
with such a hermit-like existence? It turns out that keeping to
one’s self in an area where there are lots of other organisms
around requires some social skills – you have to know a little
about the folks around