Intelligent life without bones

Photogenic predator: Coeloid cephalopods, a group of shell-less molluscs, evolved at around the time when vertebrates started to conquer land. As visual predators, they competed against early fi shes and developed remarkable complexity of body and behaviour. The photo shows the octopus Wunderpus photogenicus, found in shallow waters from Indonesia to the Philippines. (Photo: Roy L. Caldwell.) From the Hydra of Ancient Greek legend to the Kraken of Norse myths, manyarmed sea monsters have loomed large in the imagination of many sea-faring cultures. Through to the 19th and 20th century, writers from Victor Hugo and Jules Verne to H.G. Wells echoed these archaic fears and helped to keep the bad reputation of cephalopods alive. The imagined horrors of those descriptions were mainly based on dead animals washed up on the shores or on rare encounters with fi shermen. Only in the second half of the 20th century did underwater observation and fi lming by pioneers like Jacques Cousteau (1910– 1997) begin to reveal cephalopods as a fascinating and complex group of animals. Observations of intelligent behaviour of animals held in captivity — not least their uncanny ability to escape from aquariums — added to the reevaluation, but to this day their scientifi c appreciation lags behind that of vertebrates, as witnessed by the lack of offi cial conservation status and the late entry to the genome club. Functional genomics now offers additional ways to study in detail a whole range of advanced functions that evolved in cephalopods independently of the comparable abilities in vertebrates, including the sophisticated camera eye, the active and movable camoufl age patterns, and not least, their fl exible intelligence.