We’ve all watched in awe as these intelligent invertebrates solved puzzle after puzzle. We’re always surprised at how effortlessly they solve almost every challenge we put in from of them. But what if we set up a challenge that is impossible to solve? How will our octopus react to an unsolvable puzzle?
We took some crabs and sealed them in a plexiglass box. We made sure that Michael, our big powerful octopus, would not be able to open the plexiglass container no matter how much force he applied.
We ran this observational experiment for nearly an hour before we gave him his treat. The final 15 minutes were entirely uneventful. Our octopus ignored the box with the crabs after having failed to open it during the first 45 minutes. We wondered if he would also ignore the second box that contained his treat due to the fact that he was unable to open the box with the crabs. He didn’t.
