Octopus track chemosensory plumes to find food.

ABSTRACT: Chemosensory plume-guided navigation, tracking a chemical plume to its source, is a primordial behavior used by many animals to search beyond the visual range. Here we report the first laboratory observations of octopuses performing this behavior, demonstrating that they can use chemosensory plumes to find food. In a three-station discrimination task carried out in the dark, octopus showed a strong preference to move upstream towards the food-baited target, supporting the hypothesis that they are performing chemosensory plume-guided search. When seeking a single baited target, also in the dark, octopuses not only preferred to move upstream towards the food source, but they also displayed characteristic motions associated with odor-gated rheotaxis, a commonly used chemosensory tracking stra

SUBMITTER: Weertman WL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12507230 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature