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The Clever Octopus
7th grade reading
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The Clever Octopus
If you wanted to design an intelligent animal from scratch, you probably would not start with a creature that has no bones, three hearts and blue blood. Yet the octopus is one of the most remarkable problem-solvers in the animal kingdom.
In laboratories, octopuses have learned to unscrew jar lids to reach crabs inside. Some have escaped from their tanks at night, crept across the floor to a neighbouring tank to eat the fish, and then returned home before morning. In the wild, veined octopuses have been filmed collecting coconut shells, carrying them across the seabed and assembling them into a portable shelter – one of the few known examples of tool use by an invertebrate.
What makes this intelligence so surprising is how different the octopus brain is from ours. About two-thirds of its roughly 500 million nerve cells are not in its head at all but in its eight arms. Each arm can taste, touch and even make simple decisions on its own. Scientists are still debating what it might feel like to be an animal whose thinking is spread throughout its body.
The octopus's cleverness may be linked to its lifestyle. Without a shell for protection, it must outwit predators by hiding, changing colour in a fraction of a second, or squeezing through gaps no bigger than its beak. Survival depends on flexible thinking.
Strangely, most octopuses live only one or two years. They have no parents to teach them and usually die soon after laying eggs. Every skill they show, they must largely work out for themselves.
Question 1
Read "The Clever Octopus". Why does the writer open by describing the octopus's bones, hearts and blood?
- A. to show how unexpected its intelligence is
- B. to argue that octopuses are dangerous
- C. to compare octopuses with fish
- D. to explain how octopuses breathe
Question 2
Read "The Clever Octopus". Which detail best supports the idea that octopuses use tools?
- A. Veined octopuses carry coconut shells to build a shelter.
- B. Octopuses have three hearts.
- C. Octopuses live for one or two years.
- D. Each arm can taste.
Question 3
Read "The Clever Octopus". Where are most of an octopus's nerve cells?
- A. in its head
- B. in its beak
- C. in its three hearts
- D. in its arms
Question 4
Read "The Clever Octopus". What is the relationship between paragraph 4 and the rest of the text?
- A. It introduces a counterargument.
- B. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
- C. It tells a story about a single octopus.
- D. It describes how to keep an octopus.
Question 5
Read "The Clever Octopus". What does the final paragraph suggest about octopus intelligence?
- A. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.
- B. Octopuses are not really intelligent.
- C. Octopuses learn everything from their parents.
- D. Octopuses live longer than most animals.
Question 6
Read "The Clever Octopus". Which choice best states the central idea of the text?
- A. Octopuses should not be kept in laboratories.
- B. The octopus is a highly intelligent animal whose mind works very differently from ours.
- C. Octopuses escape from tanks at night.
- D. Coconut shells make good shelters.
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