Don’t Freak Out, But Scientists Think Octopuses ‘Might Be Aliens’
That’s right – the plural of ‘octopus’ is ‘octopuses’, not octopi. While this may seem like big news, it’s not as big as the news that octopuses could well be aliens. With 33,000 protein-coding genes in their genome, they have more than a human and also posses a number of unique characteristics.
“The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities,” said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago. ‘The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.”
Octopuses make for interesting animals to study due to their many weird and wonderful attributes. They have three hearts, use jet propulsion and can sometimes create instant camouflage by adapting to shapes and colours around them. Furthermore, they can also regrow lost limbs.
Scientists estimate that the two-spot octopus genome contains 2.7 billion base pairs (the chemical units of DNA) including long stretches of repeated sequences. Their genetic uniqueness had made them rather hard to place on the evolutionary scale. That said, they are wonderful creatures and are a mesmerising favourite at the aquarium.
