Master Acrobat Smart, agile octopus

In case you thought that octopuses were smart only in guessing the outcome of soccer matches (remember the late Paul the octopus in Germany who picked all the right winners in last year's world cup matches in Johannesburg?), scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have now shown that not only are they smart, they can make some pretty good moves as well.
Octopuses are among the most developed invertebrates. They have large brains and are fast learners. With eight arms and no rigid skeleton, they perform many tasks like crawling, swimming, mating and hunting. And unlike most animals such as humans -- who are restricted in their movements by a rigid skeleton which helps in determining the position of their limbs -- octopuses have limitless flexibility.
But because they have no such rigid structure, it was believed that the octopuses have only limited control over their eight flexible limbs. However, the Hebrew University researchers have shown otherwise. They developed a three-choice, transparent, plexiglass maze that required the octopus to use a single arm and direct it to a visually marked compartment outside of its tank of water that contained a food reward.