Octopus Dreaming

We never thought we needed to know what octopuses looked like when they were sleeping, but like many other things they educated us on, PBS is here to tell us we do need to know. They have an upcoming feature called Octopus: Making Contact that follows Alaskan professor and marine biologist Dr. David Schneel as he raises and studies a day octopus in his home, making remarkable discoveries about its extraordinary intelligence, personality and skills. As part of that filming, Schneel caught his octopus changing colors while it was sleeping as if it was having a dream. While he can’t confirm whether or not she was actually dreaming, he went on to narrate the dream anyway–“So here she’s asleep, she sees a crab and her color starts to change a little bit. Then she turns all dark. Octopuses will do that when they leave the bottom. This is a camouflage, like she’s just subdued a crab and now she’s going to sit there and eat it and she doesn’t want anyone to notice her. …This really is fascinating. But yeah, if she’s dreaming that’s the dream.” It’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch, and there’s even a point where the camouflage is so effective that the camera thinks it needs to refocus. Octopus: Making Contact premieres Wednesday, October 2 on PBS. Based on these two minutes alone, the film is going to be fascinating.