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Mazy's Muddle: I eight with them!

Last Updated 08 September 2011, 11:56 IST

I wish I had eight arms like an octopus to do all the work! Okay, how many hands does an octopus have? Eight? WRONG! See, we use our legs to help us move, and our hands to do other things like feed ourselves, right? A normal octopus usually uses only the two back limbs to propel itself on the seabed. So a normal octopus has only two legs. The other six limbs can be called hands.

Octopus catch food using their arms and, sometimes, if one of their arms has a virus attack, the octopus eats up its infected hand! The octopus is the most intelligent among invertebrates. When an enemy comes along, it squirts ink to confuse the creature. It has three hearts. Researchers have found that octopus can open a can like humans.

The smallest octopus lives in the Indian Ocean, weighs less than 1 gram, and is only two-and-a half centimetres from the tip of one limb to the tip of another on the opposite side.

Now can you please calculate using one arm – if I take one hour to do my maths homework with my one right hand, how long would an octopus take to do it?

Out of the maze

One-eighth of an hour...is the WRONG answer. The octopus is known to be intelligent, but no octopus has been recorded doing maths!

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(Published 08 September 2011, 11:56 IST)

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