Alex Schnell demystifies what humans know about octopuses

“When you look into a cuttlefish or octopus eye, you can see that there’s a being looking back at you,” says National Geographic Explorer, Dr. Alex Schnell. Her research as a marine biologist and comparative psychologist has demonstrated that while they lack a backbone, cephalopods—marine mollusks which are characteristically invertebrate—have more in common with spined animals, including humans, than once thought. 

Schnell first understood there was something unique about the cephalopod mind when she was a little girl exploring rock pools on the eastern beaches of Sydney. On an afternoon looking for sea stars and crustaceans, her hand brushed across something soft, the size of a water balloon. She thought it was a sea slug, but this thing was more curious, and friendly. It unfurled a suckered arm toward her.

“I saw these really developed eyes, and after a while, he reached out his arm to touch mine,” Schnell recalls. It was her earliest octopus encounter, and it left an indelible mark.

“I think that was the initial cementing moment that bore the path that I took for my career.” 

Schnell is contributing to the expanding but limited understanding humans have of the mysterious lives of octopuses, their cuttlefish relatives and other species. Historically, cephalopod intelligence has been eclipsed by octopuses’ more alien traits: they bleed blue blood, have beaks, three beating hearts and eight arms. 

But Schnell’s research adds to a growing repertoire of cephalopods displaying more human-like behavior. They can solve problems, make tools, and remember personal experiences, and yet, they’re built unique on the inside too.

Like humans, their brains are centralized, but in a donut shape that encircles their mouth and extends into their arms. “Two-thirds of their brain cells are in their arms,” Schnell explains of octopuses, and all cephalopods—that is octopuses, squid, nautiluses and cuttlefish—use their arms to taste. “Even with different hardware [than vertebrates] we’re seeing they come up with similar solutions to the same problems.”

Driven by curiosity 

In 2021, Schnell and her colleagues at the University of Cambridge found that cuttlefish could pass an adapted version of the marshmallow test, a well-known experiment on human self-control. The cuttlefish resisted eating the treat they were given, a cooked prawn, for up to two minutes in exchange for a better reward, live shrimp. 

“They’ll even distract themselves to avoid giving in,” Schnell explains. She anticipated they’d have the patience of a rat or a pigeon, only that of a few seconds, but cuttlefish exhibit self-control competitive with that of dogs, chimpanzees and crows—famously intelligent vertebrates with significantly longer life spans.

Cephalopods have big brains, and typically only live one to two years.

“I think invertebrates have been overlooked. The more we understand about them, the better we can shift our perspective, and also change the way we treat them,” Schnell urges. 

Cuttlefish can squirt a body double out of their inky bags to distract predators, and are able to recall what, where and when they last ate. As masters of disguise, octopuses can change their colors, patterns and textures to thwart an enemy or impress a mate, and yet, they’re totally colorblind. They are notoriously dextrous and have the problem solving ability to open jars, navigate mazes and engineer protective shells in the absence of a real one.

“The thing that continues to astound me is that a lot of octopuses are really quick to trust,” Schnell says. “You have this animal that has no bones, no shell, no claws to protect it. For any predator in the ocean it’s just a big juicy ball of protein, and despite that extreme vulnerability, it’s so often outweighed by their drive for curiosity. If you spend enough time with one, they will often initiate contact.”

Schnell wanted to start her career with octopuses, but they’re not consistent willing test participants. In part, their strong personalities are what make them so hard to work with. Unlike cuttlefish, who eventually come around even if they’re shy at first, some octopuses “may want absolutely nothing to do with you.” They can be unruly. Even with an appealing incentive, “octopuses, they’ll stand their ground,” Schnell explains. 

The right to better treatment

Since the 1980s the market demand for cephalopods, mainly octopuses, has seen its sharpest increase. Between 1980 and 2014, the number of octopuses caught in the wild doubled, and octopus farming efforts to relieve the strain have been challenging. Octopuses are complex to maintain, from providing their feed, to keeping them stimulated and comfortable enough to not self-destruct. Captive octopuses become so stressed they’ve been seen eating their own arms. And once they’re cultivated or caught for consumption, there’s no humane way to euthanize them. Only in the lab are they treated delicately using a chemical euthanasia, but that deems them unfit as food.

Tragically, these animals likely suffer through the end. “There is very strong evidence for sentience in cephalopods,” Schnell explains. Schnell and a team of researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science found that cephalopods and decapods (shrimp, crabs, and lobsters) likely experience emotions; from thirst, to fear, pain and distress. 

The report made it into the House of Lords, and the British government changed its law to recognize these groups as sentient beings; meaning that for the first time, in 2021 these invertebrate animals became protected under animal welfare law. 

“That just felt like such an incredible win,” Schnell remembers. “That has implications for how we treat them in the food industry and the research industry.” 

Fostering empathy for protection

In 2023, Schnell was named a Wayfinder Award recipient. For the past two years she’s been getting more deeply acquainted with octopuses as part of a new storytelling venture. 

Right now, Schnell is preparing for her onscreen debut as the principal storyteller on National Geographic’s “Secrets of the Octopus” docu-series, produced by National Geographic Explorer at Large James Cameron, and the third installment of the award winning “Secrets of” franchise. 

Of 300 species of known octopuses, some communicate using chemical signals, others engage in strategic hunting behaviors with fish or human divers. The series features 12 octopuses who showcase their intelligence visually.

Schnell has a history on the media scene. In addition to reaching a billion readers, her marshmallow test had a spot on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” Schnell has also worked as a researcher on “Planet Earth III” and “Mammals,” both BBC series, and helped produce Netflix’s “Our Oceans.”

With her husband and newborn, Schnell traveled across various continents filming for the new series, though she had reservations when she was initially approached about the opportunity.

“I was like, ‘no, I’m 38 weeks pregnant,’” she laughs. But as she familiarized herself with the project, she says she couldn’t turn it away, and she’s glad she didn’t.

“There were new behaviors that I have never seen while we were on location. It was just incredible.” 

In one sequence, there is a courtship dance performed by a male octopus, something humans only just discovered octopuses can do. It’s one of the points of familiarity that could change peoples’ minds about how cephalopods experience the world, perhaps closer to some iteration of human life than once thought. 

While researching at Cambridge, Schnell realized she wanted to compare cephalopod intelligence with birds’. “I found them [cephalopods] really interesting as my core focus group because they’ve taken a completely different evolutionary path,” Schnell remembers. 

Cephalopods don’t have social lives. They form no affiliation with partners or siblings. They don’t even have parental care and fend completely for themselves out of the egg—most octopus mothers will die soon after her clutch hatches. Yet, they’re constantly reacting to their environment in ways that suggest a certain degree of consciousness. 

When Schnell walks into the lab, her cuttlefish bob their heads out of the water to greet her. If she takes too long to acknowledge them, they’ll squirt water at her in frustration. “It’s so adorable. I can’t help but feel connected with them.” 

Out on a dive, Schnell collects inspiration for the next question she hopes to answer about these clever creatures. What she sees in the wild inspires her lab work. “I think it’s really important that the tests to understand the performance of these animals are ecologically valid. If it doesn’t make sense for them to be able to use that ability in the world, then why are you testing for it?”

She’s also collaborating with Italian scientist Piero Amodio and other fellow Explorers to further investigate octopus behavior, specifically their collaborative hunting efforts. First, they’ll be teaming up with scientists across Europe to build a fish robot using artificial intelligence. The decoy will record its interactions with octopuses, controlled by the scientists. In the second phase, Schnell will lead sharing their findings with the world.  

Storytelling around the humanity of octopuses and the larger cephalopod family could help them prosper. Documentaries like “My Octopus Teacher” have surprised and delighted people with revelations about the complex existence of these creatures and their relationship with humans. This is where Schnell’s desire for impact lies. 

“Research shows that we feel the most empathy and compassion for animals most related to us. The further we go down the evolutionary tree, we feel more disconnected to animals that look nothing like us, especially invertebrates,” Schnell says. “But research also shows that our perceptions are malleable.” 

Currently no cephalopods are on the endangered species list. “That’s not because they’re not vulnerable, we just don’t know enough about the health of their populations yet,” Schnell adds. 

For Schnell, the encounters never go stale. “Every time they reach out, your breath is taken away.” Revelations about the similarities between humans and some of the world’s strangest life forms have shifted her idea of life completely.

“It’s like when Nicolaus Copernicus dethroned Earth as the center of the cosmos and realigned the way we think about our planet, the way it works in the solar system, and our place in it,” Schnell reflects.

“We’re not the pinnacle of intelligence anymore. We share the planet with a lot of different sophisticated minds, we’re not better, we’re just different.”

“Secrets of the Octopus” will map the weird and wonderful world of these ancient, alien creatures in a new light. “I think they are the ambassadors of the oceans, and invertebrates. They show immense skill we are only beginning to understand,” Schnell goes on. “And when we love something so much, we want to protect it and the fragile ecosystems it lives in.” 

Schnell’s next project, "One World, Many Minds," aims to kindle appreciation for the diverse perspectives of different animal species, showcasing how they weave together the mosaic of our collective existence.

ABOUT THE WRITER
For the National Geographic Society: Natalie Hutchison is a Digital Content Producer for the Society. She believes authentic storytelling wields power to connect people over the shared human experience. In her free time she turns to her paintbrush to create visual snapshots she hopes will inspire hope and empathy.