Cuttlefish!

Now TWO people have recommended this Nova program "Kings of Camouflage" about the cuttlefish: an invertebrate with a big brain. You can watch videoclips from the show here. The webpage has a very cool interactive feature where you can find out about cuttlefish anatomy. Researcher Jean Boal says that octopuses are harder to work with than cuttlefish; she makes them sound a little like the cats of the invertebrate world!

"Cuttlefish are great to work with because they don't stick themselves to the bottoms of tanks like octopuses do. And you don't have to house them separately like you do with octopuses—you can put them together in one large tank, which is much easier for cleaning and maintenance and feeding and all that. In terms of their performance in experiments, octopuses are unbelievably erratic. One day they will be brilliant and for the next five days they'll act like they don't know anything at all. So it actually takes pretty intense statistics to figure out what they know and don't know. In the past, I've had more consistent performances from cuttlefish, although sometimes they like to be erratic, too. In general I've had an easier time interpreting their performances, and they are more consistent than octopuses are."

Cuttlefish bonus: The Digital Cuttlefish