Octopuses use their arms similarly to humans, scientists say : Short Wave : NPR

Octopuses and their arms are still a bit of a mystery. Not because scientists don't know how they work; their arms are boneless hydrostats, made up of groups of muscles working together, and capable of bending, twisting, elongating or shortening – like a frog's tongue, or an elephant's trunk. But because scientists are still figuring out how most octopuses use those arms in the wild.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the marine lab at Florida Atlantic University wanted to answer that question. By analyzing videos taken in the wild , they found that octopuses seemed to prefer doing certain tasks with certain arms… and that the majority of the time, they used their front arms to explore and their back arms to move.

Octopus researchers have observed some of thes