Stunning Footage Reveals What Happens When an Octopus Wakes Up From a 'Nightmare'
Octopuses are fascinating creatures that have been filmed interacting with human beings in documentaries and have been used for predicting outcomes of sporting events as well. Evidence suggests that, like most mammals, octopuses, too, feel emotions and pain. In fact, octopuses also have nightmares, just like humans, according to a study published in bioRxiv. A team of researchers documented an episode in which an octopus named Costello displayed unusual behavior linked to a traumatic experience, in the past. A footage from early 2021 showed how Costello was jolted out of his sleep before writhing with restlessness as if he was reliving a painful memory.
The footage was extracted from the security system of Rockefeller University in New York, where Costello was housed in a 120-gallon glass tank. The tank floor was sprinkled with several plastic panes, sand, real reef rocks, rubber toys, green artificial plants, real seashells, and some damselfish to keep him company and enhance the biodiversity. The animal was fed thawed frozen shrimp and live crabs. Costello was monitored 24 hours a day with a security system equipped with differently positioned bullet cameras that captured the octopus from different angles in the tank.
Then one day, Eric Ramos, a neuroscientist, entered the laboratory and was left stunned after seeing the tank. Water in the tank appeared murky as if someone had spilled a bottle of black ink in there. Perplexed, Ramos and his colleagues fetched the camera footage of the tank between 11th February 2020 and 4th April 2020. The footage wasn’t just shocking but also eye-opening. It said that, like humans, octopuses also feel things like trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and painful memory flashbacks.
One scene from the footage, as shared by Rockefeller University (@RockefellerUniv), shows Costello napping peacefully inside his tank. Then, all of a sudden, he jolted out of sleep and started flailing his tentacles frantically. He also started altering his colors from mottled to solid red. He kept pounding at the tank, thrashing and wriggling as if he was struggling. Moments later, he even released black ink from his body, the plumes of which soon clouded the entire tank. All of this happening without any provocation suggested that Costello's reaction was a defense mechanism against an imagined predator. Ramos told the New York Times that Costello was even clutching onto a tall pipe as if trying to "kill it." All of this indicated that he was suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
According to The Smithsonian, Costello had a rough life before he came to live in this tank. Off the coast of Florida Keys, some unknown predator ate up two of his arms and left a third arm injured. After observing the footage of the tank, the researcher deduced that he was having nightmares and expressed dread over these with evasive, aggressive, erratic, and frantic behaviors.
His fear couldn’t be entirely wrong, though. An infamous story from Manta Point in Bali depicted that octopuses experience a threat from predatory creatures such as sharks. The owner of the diving company recorded how a brownbanded bamboo shark ripped an octopus sticking to the rocks and swallowed it whole, one of its tentacles dangling from the shark’s mouth.
Other scientists speculated that Costello was showing signs of “senescence,” the stage right before death, when an octopus's body starts to break down. This hypothesis seems equally valid as Costello died right after this episode, in April 2021, due to a stomach parasite. “It was really bizarre because it looked like he was in pain; it looked like he might have been suffering for a moment. And then he just got up like nothing had happened, and he resumed his day as normal,” Ramos told Live Science.