How to use 8 arms? Octopuses tend to explore with their front limbs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Humans may be right-handed or left-handed. It turns out octopuses don’t have a dominant arm, but they do tend to perform some tasks more often with their front arms, new research shows.

Scientists studied a series of short videos of wild octopuses crawling, swimming, standing, fetching, and groping — among other common activities — to analyze how each of the eight arms were moving.

“All of the arms can do all of this stuff – that’s really amazing,” said co-author and marine biologist Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Octopus limbs aren’t specialized as many mammal limbs are. However, the three octopus species in the study showed a clear preference for using their four front arms, which they did about 60% of the time. The bac