Is This Picture-Taking Octopus as Smart as She Seems?
Octopuses can be trained to do many things, but this one may be getting too much credit.
What’s got eight arms, shoots pictures underwater, and lives in New Zealand? Answer: Rambo, a female octopus in a New Zealand aquarium that trainers have taught to photograph visitors using a waterproof digital camera mounted to the side of her tank. A Sony video that went viral this week shows fans eagerly posing for her.
Animal behaviorist Mark Vette, with Animals on Q—a New Zealand company that trains animals for film and television—used food rewards to teach the octopus to press the camera's shutter in response to a buzzer. She picked up the task fairly quickly, he says, but in living up to her action-star-name, Rambo also destroyed two cameras. (Watch a sneaky octopus take