Every minute of video it took hours to analyze, said Bulesch. In general, the researchers cataloged 3,907 arm actions that required 6,871 arm deformations.
The inventory of animal arm movement could help researchers better understand neuronal connections that allow the octos to coordinate their arms to work in different combinations and receive comments from the environment.
The octopus have a complex and misunderstood nervous system, with nerves that run for each of their eight arms. The offspring in each arm give animals a feeling of contact, but they also have chemiorreceptors that allow them to essentially try touch.
“If I am an octopus, I am using my arms to run on the surfaces, glue them in holes in the seabed, looking in cracks in coral heads or rocky shelves and feeling there, but above all knowing there to see what is happening,” said Bulesch.
The octopus have a decentralized nervous system with more neurons in the arms than in their central brain, Bulesch said.
“We are all starting to gather the different parts of the puzzle that explain, how does this strange nervous system work?”
