Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Mattias Krantz / Youtube.
Mattias Krantz taught an octopus to make music on an underwater piano.

We have all heard stories about how intelligent octopuses are. I have posted several such stories myself: for example, this one about naturalist Sy Montgomery. Today’s octopus story, however, takes the cake.

Mihai Andrei writes at ZME Science, “Mattias Krantz is a YouTuber with a penchant for bonkers engineering and musical projects. … This is the story of Tako, a common octopus rescued from the frying pan, and how it came to play musical notes on an underwater piano. …

“Krantz approached the project with the naive optimism of a doer. His hypothesis was simple: if playing the piano requires finger independence and multitasking, an octopus should technically be the most dexterous player on Earth.

“We humans are centralized creatures. Our brain sits in our skull like a CEO in a penthouse, barking orders down the spinal cord to the rest of the body. The octopus is different. They are the result of convergent evolution — intelligence evolving on a completely different branch of the tree of life. Sometimes, an octopus’ arm will make its own decisions, without consulting the brain. And we’re not talking about reflex.

Octopus arms can fully make some decisions all by themselves.

“Krantz … hooked up a system of lights. He tried to teach Tako that hitting a lighted key meant food, a method that previously worked on chicken.

“It was a disaster.

“Tako simply ignored the keys and the lights. He dismantled the equipment. He did what octopuses do best: he investigated the environment on his own terms.

“This failure illustrates a critical concept in animal behavior science: the Umwelt. It’s the self-world of the animal. We humans are visual creatures; we love lights and screens. Octopuses are tactile and chemical creatures. Trying to teach an octopus using visual cues designed for a human is like trying to teach a human to read using only smells. It doesn’t matter how smart the student is if the teacher is speaking the wrong language.

“Or, as Krantz put it, he was ‘trying to apply chicken logic to an octopus.’ …

“Octopuses explore the world by grabbing and retracting. They are ambush predators and foragers; they reach into crevices and pull out crabs. So instead of piano keys, he built a custom piano with levers instead of keys.

“But that was only half the battle. The other half was the ‘crab’ elevator.

“Tako loves eating crabs. This was his favorite reward. So, Krantz built a contraption where Tako had to pull a piano lever to lower a tube containing a crab. … It turned the piano from an instrument into a puzzle. And if there is one thing cephalopods love, it is a puzzle. But he added a twist: the crab would only lower slightly. To get the crab all the way down, Tako had to hit the right notes in sequence.

“Suddenly, the ‘eight pianists in one body’ began to coordinate. With the right motivation and mechanism, Tako organized and started to create sounds. Not just noise, but deliberate activation of sound to achieve a result. …

“Octopuses lack ears and are deaf to the soaring melodic frequencies (treble and mid-range) that make up the ‘music’ we hear. However, they possess balance organs called statocysts that allow them to detect low-frequency vibrations (roughly 400Hz–1000Hz) and particle motion in the water.

“Tako wasn’t ‘jamming’ or appreciating the blues. To Tako, the piano wasn’t an instrument of expression but rather a [vending machine] that ‘thudded’ when he hit the right combination. … He may have enjoyed the activity to some extent, and definitely seemed to enjoy the puzzle-solving part, but we can’t say he was creating music.

“Still, the most poignant part of this story isn’t the music. It’s the relationship. We have a dark history of underestimating animals until we give them a name. In the lab, they are subjects. In the market, they are food. But in the home, they become individuals.

“As the experiment progressed, Krantz realized he wanted what was best for Tako. But he probably wouldn’t have survived if he was sent back into the ocean. The experiment created a bond. The ‘subject’ became a ‘who.’ Tako may not be Rachmaninoff, but he was Tako; not food.

“So, the musician decided Tako will live with him from now on.” More about what that entailed at ZME Science, here.