"Anyone with a paltry two arms is probably familiar with handedness, our predisposition to use either the left or right hand for particular tasks. (No ambidexterity erasure intended; you are valid!) But if you have the privilege of owning eight arms, how do you decide which arm to use? Can you even be left- or right-handed, or would you be third- or sixth-handed?"
"Their resulting report on how the cephalopods deploy their eight arms was recently published in in Scientific Reports, and it functions as a kind of glossary of the many capabilities of their powerful, suckered arms. Surprisingly, the scientists discovered that octopuses have no preferences between their left and right arms. Instead, the animals have something akin to a front and back preference, using their front four arms for exploration and the back for four movement."
"It can take hours to find wild octopuses, which are famously good at disguising themselves. "It's always tricky locating these animals that are masters of camouflage, but after several years, I got the hang of it," Bennice wrote in an email. These long dives offer researchers their best chance at observing the animals under natural conditions, away from the distractions of a laboratory setting."
Octopuses do not exhibit human-like left-right handedness; instead, they display front-back arm specialization with front arms used primarily for exploration and rear arms used for movement. Earlier laboratory experiments suggested lateral arm preferences but focused on limited, one- or two-arm movements. Observations of wild octopuses during lengthy dives revealed natural arm usage patterns that differ from lab findings and highlighted diverse arm capabilities. Locating wild octopuses is difficult because of exceptional camouflage, making extended fieldwork necessary to observe authentic behaviors and to catalog the full natural range of octopus arm functions.
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