--- title: Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An octopus is a soft relative of snails and clams, yet it is one of the cleverest animals in the sea. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Animal minds: the octopus, escape arti… # Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver Lesson 234 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/0/) — An octopus is a soft relative of snails and clams, yet it is one of the cleverest animals in the sea. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/1/) — Put a crab in a screw-top jar and an octopus will feel it, test it and then unscrew the lid, and some have learned to open a jar from the inside. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/2/) — Its brain is spread out: one main brain in the head, and big bundles of nerve cells in each of its eight arms, which taste and feel everything they touch. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/4/) — Strangest of all, a baby octopus never meets its parents, so everything clever it does, it works out on its own. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/7/) — An octopus has no bones; its only hard part is its beak, so it can squeeze through any gap bigger than the beak. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/8/) — In 2016 an octopus called Inky was reported to have escaped from a New Zealand aquarium through a gap and down a drainpipe to the sea. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/9/) — Octopuses change colour in a flash with millions of tiny colour sacs in their skin, to hide, show mood or startle enemies. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/10/) — Octopuses are thought to be colour-blind, yet they match their background so well that scientists still argue about how. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/11/) — The veined octopus of Indonesia carries coconut shell halves and closes itself inside them when danger comes, a kind of tool use. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/12/) — Octopuses can recognise people, and one in a lab squirted water at a keeper it disliked, and one in a German aquarium squirted water at a bright lamp that bothered it until the lamp short-circuited. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/14/) — An octopus has three hearts and blue blood, because its blood uses copper instead of iron to carry oxygen; its cousin the squid has three hearts too. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/15/) — In a test like the marshmallow test, cuttlefish waited for a shrimp they liked rather than take a less-liked crab at once. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/16/) — Gloomy octopuses in Australia were filmed throwing silt and shells with a jet of water, sometimes at each other. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver/17/) — The mimic octopus, discovered in 1998 off Indonesia, copies the shape and movement of dangerous animals like sea snakes and flatfish. - ← previous: [Animal minds: clever crows, ravens, jays and parrots](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/233-animal-minds-clever-crows-ravens-jays-and-parrots/) - next →: [Animal minds: dolphins' names, orca grandmothers and whale songs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/235-animal-minds-dolphins-names-orca-grandmothers-and-whale-songs/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)