Wildlife | Ocean Discoveries | Animal Intelligence
Deep beneath the surface of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, a marine biologist witnessed something so extraordinary that it seemed almost impossible.
An octopus was hunting among the coral, carefully searching for hidden prey.
Nearby, a scientist watched its movements.
Then something remarkable happened.
The scientist began pointing toward places where small crabs were hiding or escaping.
And the octopus appeared to respond.
What followed was an unusual interaction between a human and one of the ocean’s most intelligent creatures — an encounter that left the researcher amazed.
The moment was captured during the filming of National Geographic’s documentary series Secrets of the Octopus.
It featured marine biologist Dr. Alex Schnell and an octopus the documentary team had named Scarlett.
For Schnell, the experience offered a fascinating glimpse into the possibility that humans and octopuses might be able to exchange useful information through gestures.
But it also raised an even bigger question.
How much do these mysterious eight-armed animals actually understand about the world around them?
Meet Scarlett, the Octopus That Surprised Scientists
Scarlett was one of the octopuses observed by the documentary crew while filming around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The production involved approximately 1,500 hours of filming, allowing researchers and filmmakers to observe behaviors that people rarely witness in the wild.
Octopuses are notoriously difficult animals to study.
They can hide inside tiny crevices, change their appearance almost instantly, and disappear into their surroundings.
Unlike many social mammals, most octopus species spend much of their lives alone.
Yet they possess remarkable learning abilities and sophisticated nervous systems.
During the filming, Scarlett displayed behavior that caught the scientists’ attention.
She appeared to cooperate with another species while hunting.
And that observation inspired an experiment that would become one of the documentary’s most memorable moments.
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The Strange Signal From Another Fish
Before the scientist attempted to communicate with Scarlett, the documentary crew observed a fascinating interaction between the octopus and a coral trout.
The fish appeared to perform a distinctive movement, positioning its body downward toward a particular area of the reef.
Researchers interpreted this head-down posture as a signal indicating where prey might be hiding.
The octopus could then investigate the location using its flexible arms.
This type of behavior is particularly interesting because octopuses and fish have very different bodies, senses, and evolutionary histories.
Yet under certain circumstances, they can cooperate while searching for food.
The fish may help identify prey hidden within the reef, while the octopus can reach into narrow spaces that a fish cannot easily access.
The observation suggested that the two animals could respond to each other’s signals during a shared hunting opportunity.
For Dr. Schnell, it sparked an intriguing idea.
If a fish could indicate where prey was hiding, could a human do something similar?
The Moment a Scientist Tried to Communicate With an Octopus
As Scarlett explored the coral, Dr. Schnell approached carefully.
She watched the octopus searching beneath pieces of reef, using her arms to investigate hidden spaces.
Occasionally, small crabs escaped from the areas Scarlett was searching.
Schnell noticed their movements.
Rather than simply watching, she began pointing toward the places where the crabs had gone.
Then came the unexpected response.
According to Schnell’s account, Scarlett immediately reacted to her pointing gestures.
The octopus appeared to use the information to continue searching for prey.
For a marine biologist who had spent years studying these animals, it was an extraordinary experience.
The interaction suggested that Scarlett could potentially interpret a gesture made by a completely different species.
Schnell described the experience as magical and said it deserved further scientific investigation.
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Was the Octopus Really Communicating With a Human?
The interaction was remarkable, but scientists must be careful about what it actually proves.
Communication does not necessarily require spoken language.
Animals communicate through movements, body positions, colors, sounds, and other signals.
A pointing gesture can also convey information.
In this case, Scarlett appeared to respond to the direction indicated by Dr. Schnell.
That raises the possibility that the octopus understood the gesture as a useful signal about the location of food.
However, one observation cannot establish that Scarlett understood human pointing in the same way a person would.
The octopus might have learned to associate the scientist’s movements with prey, or it might have been responding to other visual cues.
Controlled experiments would be necessary to distinguish between these explanations.
Nevertheless, the encounter provides an intriguing starting point for research into communication between humans and cephalopods.
Why Octopuses Are Among the Ocean’s Most Fascinating Animals
Octopuses have some of the most unusual nervous systems in the animal kingdom.
An octopus has approximately 500 million neurons, although the exact number varies by species.
Remarkably, a large proportion of these neurons are located outside its central brain, particularly in its eight arms.
This distributed nervous system allows the arms to process sensory information and coordinate complex movements with considerable independence.
Each arm contains numerous suckers that can detect chemical and physical information from the surrounding environment.
This means an octopus can explore objects through both touch and chemical sensing.
It can investigate a crevice, manipulate an object, and react to changes in its environment with extraordinary flexibility.
Researchers have also documented octopuses solving problems, learning through experience, and manipulating objects to obtain food.
These abilities make them especially interesting to scientists studying the evolution of intelligence.
They Can Change Color Almost Instantly
Another remarkable octopus ability is camouflage.
Specialized cells in their skin allow them to rapidly change color and pattern.
They can also alter their skin texture, creating bumps and ridges that help them resemble rocks, coral, or other underwater surfaces.
These transformations can make an octopus extremely difficult for predators or prey to detect.
But camouflage isn’t the only reason octopuses change their appearance.
Color changes can also occur during hunting, defensive encounters, and interactions with other animals.
Researchers continue investigating how these visual displays function in different contexts.
The same sophisticated sensory and behavioral systems that support camouflage may contribute to the remarkable adaptability seen in encounters such as Scarlett’s.
Three Hearts, Blue Blood, and an Extraordinary Body
If octopuses seem almost extraterrestrial, their anatomy helps explain why.
They have three hearts.
Two pump blood through the gills, while the third circulates blood through the rest of the body.
Their blood contains hemocyanin, a copper-based oxygen-carrying protein that gives it a bluish appearance.
And because octopuses have no rigid internal skeleton, they can squeeze through surprisingly small openings.
Their flexible bodies allow them to explore spaces that would be inaccessible to many other animals of similar size.
These unusual adaptations have developed over hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Yet despite being so different from humans, octopuses have evolved impressive abilities to learn and respond to their surroundings.
That combination is part of what makes Scarlett’s interaction with a human so compelling.
Another Octopus Learned to Summon a Scientist
Scarlett is not the only octopus whose behavior has fascinated researchers.
In a separate documentary, The Octopus in My House, marine biologist David Scheel studied an octopus named Heidi.
Scheel created a device that allowed Heidi to pull a string and activate a light or signal.
Heidi learned to operate the device, demonstrating her ability to associate an action with a consequence.
The experiment provided another example of octopus learning and problem-solving.
It did not prove that Heidi understood human language, but it showed how an octopus could learn to interact with a human-designed system.
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Could Humans Someday Communicate With Octopuses?
The idea of communicating with another intelligent species has fascinated humans for centuries.
Scientists have already studied communication in dolphins, whales, primates, birds, and many other animals.
Octopuses present a particularly interesting challenge because their intelligence evolved along a very different evolutionary path from ours.
They do not have hands, facial expressions, or vocal communication systems comparable to those of humans.
Instead, they rely on their flexible arms, sensitive suckers, vision, and remarkable body control.
The encounter between Scarlett and Dr. Schnell suggests that simple gestures may provide one possible way for humans and octopuses to exchange information.
But scientists still need to investigate how reliably octopuses interpret such signals.
Can they follow pointing gestures in different situations?
Can they distinguish between accidental movements and intentional signals?
Can they learn new gestures?
And do individual octopuses vary in how they respond?
Answering these questions could deepen our understanding of intelligence beyond the human world.
Why This Encounter Matters
The most important lesson from Scarlett’s behavior may be that intelligence can take many different forms.
Humans often judge other animals by how closely their abilities resemble our own.
We recognize intelligence in animals that use tools, solve puzzles, remember individuals, or respond to human instructions.
But an octopus experiences the world through an extraordinarily different body.
Its nervous system, senses, and natural behaviors have developed to solve the challenges of underwater life.
The fact that a human and an octopus appeared able to coordinate their actions during a hunt is therefore especially fascinating.
It suggests that two species separated by an immense evolutionary distance may still find ways to respond meaningfully to one another.
A Magical Moment Beneath the Waves
When Dr. Alex Schnell pointed toward escaping crabs, she was not expecting to have a conversation in the ordinary human sense.
She was exploring whether an octopus might respond to information communicated through a gesture.
Scarlett’s reaction gave her a reason to keep asking questions.
The interaction does not prove that octopuses understand human language or possess human-like thoughts.
But it demonstrates why observing animals in their natural habitats can reveal surprising behaviors that laboratory experiments might overlook.
For viewers, the moment is captivating because it challenges familiar assumptions about the creatures living beneath the ocean’s surface.
And for scientists, it offers another opportunity to investigate how intelligence and communication evolve.
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of Scarlett’s story isn’t that an octopus seemed to understand a human gesture. It’s that we are still discovering just how much these remarkable animals are capable of.
Watch the Original Documentary Footage
The encounter was featured in National Geographic’s Secrets of the Octopus, released in 2024.
You can explore the footage and related videos here:
Watch the National Geographic octopus video on YouTube.
Sources
- GOOD — Incredible Clip Showing Octopus Communicating With Scientist Is Just ‘Magical’ (2024)
- GOOD — ‘Magical’ Clip Showing Octopus Communicating With Scientist (2025)
- BBC Learning Hub — Heidi the Octopus Learns to Communicate
- PBS Nature — Octopus: Making Contact
Editorial note: The original encounter was documented in 2024. The octopus’s response to pointing gestures is an observation, not definitive proof of human-like communication. Images in this article are illustrative.
🐙❤️ Do you think octopuses are among the most intelligent creatures in the ocean? Would you be brave enough to swim alongside one? Share your thoughts in the comments!
