Why Octopuses Might Be The Next Lab Rats
Move over, fruit flies, rats and zebrafish. Squid and octopuses have elaborate brains and behaviors, and scientists say studying them in the laboratory could yield important biological insights.
At the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., there's a room filled with burbling aquariums. A lot of them have lids weighed down with big rocks.
"Octopuses are notorious for being able to, kind of, escape out of their enclosures," says Bret Grasse, whose official title at MBL is "manager of cephalopod operations" — cephalopods being squid, cuttlefish and octopuses.
He's part of a team that's trying to figure out the best ways to raise these sea creatures in captivity, so that scientists can investigate their genes and learn the secrets of their strange, almost alien ways.
For decades, much of the like mice, fruit flies, worms and zebrafish.
