Octopus vs Underwater Maze

This is my pet octopus named Sashimi. And this is a vault filled with all her favorite food. The only problem is, in order to get to this vault, she'll have to rely on her incredible intelligence and dexterity to make it all the way through this nine part underwater obstacle course.

And just like when I made my backyard obstacle course for squirrels, out of the gate, I will admit in hindsight, I completely underestimated the capabilities of this remarkable creature. But to understand how we even ended up at this spot, we need to go back in time six months when I decided to get a pet octopus to see for myself if they were really as smart as people say they are. And after bringing her home to CrunchLabs and putting her into a saltwater optimized and appropriately decorated tank, she made herself right at home.

And the first thing that stood out is just how curious they are. For example, when you put anything into the tank, including your arm, they immediately swim towards it and just want to interact. And we'll cover this in a minute.

But beyond just being able to really securely latch on to things like my hand It’s so strong! Oh my goodness. Her suckers are also gathering information about me, like my smell, taste and color.

And so after just a few weeks, given how playful she is, it's hard not to form a quick bond. For example, she loved to go up and wave four tentacles in the jet stream, which I assume is the octopus equivalent of a dog sticking its head out of a car window. She could play catch with us, she had a propensity for selfies any time she saw a camera.

And whenever we put a toy submersible in her tank, she would go full 20,000 leagues under the sea. And as I did more research, I learned that for the 100 million octopi every year us humans put on a dinner plate or in a pet store, basically, all are born and originally raised in the ocean, meaning they aren't bred in captivity, which is when I was hit with the startling realization that essentially made me the bad guy in Finding Nemo. And since no one wants to be the bad guy in Finding Nemo, as much as we'd already come to love Sashimi here at CrunchLabs, we did some investigating and found out from the pet store we got her from the exact spot they pulled her out of the ocean.

The only problem with my plan of returning her, was she'd been hand fed now for quite some time. So the idea was that if she could figure out and remember how to solve an obstacle course maze then I would be assured that she could figure out and remember her early days hunting in the ocean and we could send her back home with confidence. Phase one of the plan was to give her some challenges and then observe her behavior to understand what capabilities she actually had.

And as it turns out. . .

it's a lot. For starters, their ability to color and shapeshift is unmatched in the animal kingdom. For example, can you spot the octopus hiding in plain sight right here?

The only thing more impressive than that is when you slow it down. Play it in reverse and see just how quickly and convincingly these changes occur. And it's not just camouflage as a form of protection.

They can also mimic the shape of larger, more predatory animals like eels. And as Sashimi shows here, and you can see here, they’ve even come up with some pretty creative ways to scoot themselves around. There’s stories from octopus researchers where they will recognize and shoot water at only one specific person any time they walk by the tank.

And they'll still recognize that person, even if they switch clothes with other people or other stories where the octopus will repeatedly shoot water jets at the light switch to turn off the lights in the room. It's also not uncommon for them to escape their tanks at night to better map out the room they're being stored in or to raid the other takes for food only to return to their tank in the morning like nothing ever happened. And after a month or two of observation once we had really come to understand each other we had all the data we needed to enter phase two.

So after a lot of brainstorming, CAD, 3D printing, and laser cutting. We eventually landed here starting at the conclusion of the nine part obstacle course with the Golden Vault. If she can figure out how to unscrew the vault door well then she’s earned the 3 pounds of her favorite food: shrimp contained therein and the reason we know it's her favorite food is because over the course of a week, we've prepared an underwater seafood buffet with four different food options.

And all four times we repeated the experiment the aroma from the shrimp was consistently the most irresistible. But in order to earn that succulent reward, she's got her work cut out for her, starting back at the beginning with challenge number one the over-under. If she finds a way to get under this barrier through these rocks well then she's got to find a way to get over this barrier, through these floating balls.

And if she manages that, then is through the green circular portal, where she'll find herself face to face with this four panel revolving door. And if she works out how revolving doors work and makes it through the next green portal well then Sashimi will basically be met by a wall and at this point it's game over. Unless she correctly deduces that by pushing this block out she can pass through the corridor and continue her journey upwards to the ball drop.

And this is where things level up a notch because dexterity becomes much more critical in this case she has to grab this lever and rotate it in this slot, which will allow it to fall down with the balls trailing behind, clearing up the pathway upwards through the tube. But then once she swims up the tube, she'll be trapped because the porthole out is blocked by this red gate. that is unless she figures out how to hit the emergency exit button, which will push this glass counterweight ball down off the edge, thereby pulling the gate up and allowing entry into perhaps my favorite obstacle, the fish out of water.

Because here the only way for Sashimi to continue her progress would be to flex her ability to comfortably live on land for up to an hour by crawling out of the water up over and back down on the other side, where after passing through the portal she gets a bit of a power up, because on the back side of the snorkeling Phat Gus is a shrimp. Now, this is a bit of a throwback to the tourist trap on the squirrel maze, where a strategically placed snack led to a timely photo op. But in this case I call it the Medusa because the hope is that as she eats the shrimp with her beak on the underside of where her legs all come together it will look like Phat Gus has eight braids of beautiful, flowing hair.

And now that she's feeling refreshed, Sashimi can hopefully finish strong with the penultimate challenge, which is sort of a double obstacle because there are six holes in the top ranging from small to really small. And if she takes the easy route by squeezing through the least small hole. Well, and she has a lot more maze to deal with as opposed to the smallest hole That puts her right at the finish.

Either way, at this point, she's made it here. And if she solves the final puzzle by unscrewing the vault door, she's not only earned the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet but she’s proven she's quick enough on her tentacles to handle being returned back to her ocean home to the very tide pools she was raised in. So with everything in place, all that was left to do was open this ball valve.

And as the smell of fresh shrimp made its way to her tank she made her way down the tube like an eight-legged gladiator to her saltwater colosseum. So while we wait for her to make that 40-second trek this is the perfect time to mention that if you want a Christmas morning reaction like this or this, or this, Yes look. Then a CrunchLabs Build Box subscription is the answer.

Because with the build box not only do you get a super fun toy that you get to put together every month but you do it alongside me while I teach you all the incredible physics behind how it works. We're right there in the trenches, building, learning, and succeeding together so the principles really sink in. It works.

So if you're a kid and you're looking for something to put at the top of your Christmas list, or you're just looking to be the household hero by giving it to someone else, use the link at the video description or head to CrunchLabs. com where were giving away two free boxes as a holiday special. Now back to Sashimi.

After making it into the main tank then sort of exploring the borders of the maze for a bit, she made her way inside fairly quickly, but then sort of just chilled, like she really didn't understand what she was supposed to do next. But since you can only ignore the ambrosial smell of raw, fresh shrimp for so long she eventually got curious and started exploring. And one of the first things we observed is that any time she's in a new environment, she kind of maps things out by walking around gathering data with her arms as opposed to just swimming around freely through the middle.

And soon enough she had things figured out. Now, admittedly, this first challenge was a bit of a softball because having observed Sashimi in her home tank I knew she was good at digging and burrowing herself in the sand, using the water propulsion from her siphon tube to clear the rocks away. The floating balls were even less of a challenge for her, and after making it through, you really get a sense of how much she sends out her arms as scouts to gather critical information, especially in the wild They can reach their arms around and inside crevices, not only to smell not only to smell and taste but, as we'll cover in a minute, even see and independently think.

So obstacle one was pretty straightforward but figuring out how to operate a revolving door would be a much harder test. . .

Wow. Okay. I see how this is going to be.

And this was my first real indicator that we were headed for a real battle of wits. It was a similar feeling to when the squirrels eventually outsmarted my rope bridge of instability, but just jumping over it altogether. And I really should have seen this coming because as you can see in this video of an octopus escaping from a ship, as long as an opening is bigger than their beak, which is the only actual hard part of their body, then they can eventually squeeze through it.

In fact, if we roll that back. You can see Sashimi’s beak or mouth right here. And while this part looks like a big nose, that's actually their main body where all their vital organs reside, like their brain, stomach, gills, kidneys, ink sack, siphon.

And there are three hearts. Two other cool facts about octopi is their blood is blue because it's copper based, since that's more efficient in cold, low oxygen environments. And if they lose an arm, they can regrow it completely and it will look indistinguishable from the original.

Next up was the block push. Once again, she got to this point and was sort of stumped without an obvious path forward. But this is where their natural curiosity pays off because she's not just feeling surfaces with her arms but also constantly pulling and pushing to see what she can interact with.

And so sort of by default, she figured out this red part of the wall doesn't push back as hard which cleared the way up to the ball drop. And I knew this one would be tough for her because, number one there's not enough room for her to just squeeze by. And number two, pushing and pulling on walls wasn't going to solve it either.

And after struggling in vain to find out what she was supposed to do for quite some time, eventually she got frustrated and just stopped and sat there, almost like she was processing all the data she just gathered and this was the moment I knew for sure I was in over my head because while basically maintaining eye contact with me as a flex, she reaches up with one arm and then twists the bar, which dislodges the ball allowing her to clear them out and move on. And this feels like the perfect moment to tell you that my absolute favorite fact about the octopus is that they are truly the closest thing we have to intelligent alien life on this planet. And here's what I mean by that.

This is a very simplified version of a tree of Life. These kind of diagrams show you how all life is related and what evolved from what. How do we know this?

Well, by being true scientific detectives and looking for clues. For example, a few hundred years ago, scientists noticed that us humans have seven vertebrae in our necks, but so did giraffes. But wait a sec.

So do whales, mice, elephants, lions, horses, and bats. So that's a clue they all share a common ancestor and belong to this group called Mammals. And it's not just neck bones Watch what happens if you compare the arm bone configurations of a human to a bat, to a chicken, to a turtle, to a dolphin.

It's wild what tiny beneficial mutations and millions of generations can produce and of course, with genome sequencing developing over the last 40 years, it's allowed us to compare the DNA of different species and sort of check our answers in the back of the book. Anyways, using these techniques, if you want to see where our lineage broke off from that of octopi in the Tree of Life, you have to go back over half a billion years ago to a simple flatworm. But if you look closely, all of what we think of as the smart animals are over here on this side of the tree of Life, including dolphins, dogs, pigs, horses, humans, but even birds, dinosaurs and fish and their intelligence and way of thinking are all related to each other.

Sort of like those arm bones I showed. But octopi developed their intelligence completely independently from everything over here, like an alien from another planet. And that's why they're built just so differently from us.

For example, they have twice as many neurons as a cat. But unlike all the animals over here, where all the neurons are focused in the brain, in octopi, only one third of their neurons are in the brain and the rest are in their arms, which means they not only smell and taste, but they can even think and act independently with their arms. That means that even if their arm is cut off, the arm can still camouflage itself to the surroundings by sensing light.

It would be like closing your eyes, walking into a room, touching a wall and having your hand match the color. Having eight independent mini brains, along with a larger central brain is as incomprehensible as alien intelligence to us. Now, back at the maze, Sashimi had made it to the emergency button, putting her at the halfway mark, and as usual, she starts by having her arms do all the recon work.

And it's almost like once she feels the red door, she figures out my trick and then immediately pushes the button to drop the ball and open the gate to move on to my favorite obstacle, the fish out of water. And I was relieved to see that I'd thrown her another curveball because after quite a bit of exploratory arm expeditions, she realizes that the only way forward is up and out. And so after psyching herself up, she just goes for it, sliding up, over and eventually down.

And this demonstrates another octopus superpower because they can survive out of water for up to an hour. And as you can see here Shawday! Theres an octopus eating a crab!

It's one of the reasons they're such successful hunters in and around tide pools. And now that we're coming down the final stretch, I figured she deserved a bit of a snack break with the Medusa. And just like I'd hoped, once she saw the shrimp attached to the back, she starts chomping down with her beak.

And since that's right at the center of all her legs we get a couple different hair options for Phat Gus starting first with a more free-flowing sandy blonde option which eventually morphed into more of a dark-haired up-do. Now, the reason she's able to change her appearance so drastically is because all octopi have four tricks up their sleeve. First, their skin is covered in tiny little sacs called chromatophores, filled with either black, red or yellow pigment, and then they use their muscles to stretch those sacs like a balloon to achieve any combination of those three colors.

Then they've got a layer below that called Iridophores that bounce back specific wavelengths of light, giving those iridescent blues like peacocks or beetles. Then there's even one more layer that reflects back ambient light called Luciphores. On top of all that, they can also use a muscular structure called papillae to change the texture of their skin, creating ridges and bumps.

And because they could change any of those in as little as 200 milliseconds, which is literally less than the blink of an eye, it makes them the true masters of disguise in the animal kingdom. Now, she was on to the maze and you can see she opted for the largest hole, which of course means she had the maximum amount of maze ahead of her. And I love this because it's sort of classic Sashimi at this point, but you can see she's willing to play along for quite a while and make just about every possible wrong turn along the way.

But then eventually she's over it and just cuts right to the end. And while that's technically an automatic DQ I took the high road and let it slide. which brought her to the Golden Vault.

After a month or so of training on all the obstacles, she had finally done it, and with the tide on her side, she went straight for the door, ripped it off the foundation, and then immediately basked in the sweet, delicious taste of a hard earned victory in the largest stockpile of shrimp she'd ever seen. And after letting her gorge for a bit, it was time for me to uphold my end of the deal and give her the Finding Nemo happy ending she deserved by driving her 8 hours down the coast back to the exact beach where she was raised. Having figured out and remembered the solutions to all my dumb puzzles I was convinced she could certainly figure out and remember what it was like to hunt for her own food in the open ocean.

And this was a bittersweet moment because there's one octopus fact I haven't mentioned, which is their entire lifespan is only about one and a half years. And as a final act after laying her eggs, a female will continually watch over and protect them to the point that she stops eating and dies. Which meant that in the exact same coves in tide pools that her mother did for her, soon Sashimi would be extending that ever changing tree of life by one more generation, only, perhaps this time creating a new branch of super-intelligent puzzle-solving offspring.

With everything you know about Sashimi at this point it should come as no surprise. She also has incredible taste in toys but what should also hopefully not surprise you after watching the videos I've been making on YouTube for 12 years, is that learning science and engineering doesn't have to be sucky and boring. Which is exactly why I started a toy company called CrunchLabs with the expressed goal of helping kids think like an engineer through monthly toys that get delivered to your door where you put it together with me.

And having already shipped millions of these boxes. The data is in; 87% of kids rate it and 8 out of 10 on a fun scale, out of ten. But here's the dirty secret.

More than three out of four parents said their child gained a new passion around STEM and engineering from the boxes. Our secret sauce here, just like on my videos, is hiding the vegetables so everyone leaves feeling stoked about the outcome. On top of that, each month your box has a chance to contain the platinum ticket, and if you get it well then you're coming out here to CrunchLabs to build with me and my team for day.

So if you want to embark on this monthly journey with me and get a Christmas morning reaction like this. . .

Yes Oh my God. Just go to CrunchLabs. com or use the link to the video description where we're giving away those two boxes free as a holiday special.

Thanks for watching.