Octoplay

Octopuses are the geniuses of the invertebrate world. They can navigate mazes, unscrew jars, and escape into neighboring tanks to feed. And now it seems that octopuses are even smart enough to have fun. Roland Anderson, a marine biologist at the Seattle Aquarium, and Jennifer Mather, an animal behaviorist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, were surprised to find that octopuses play. Birds and mammals engage in all sorts of play: cats bat at string; birds appear to soar for the sheer joy of it. Invertebrates, however, were thought to lack the sophistication to play, or as a scientist might define it, "to engage in repetitive behavior unrelated to food gathering or reproduction." Anderson had heard colleagues casually mention that octopuses seemed to like floating thermometers. "I happened to have a bottle of Tylenol that I was about done with, so we filled it with water and glued ...