Video of Costello the octopus may show him waking from nightmare, say scientists

Costello was filmed 24 hours a day in a university laboratory in New York over the course of a month

Four times he woke abruptly before engaging ‘in antipredator and predatory behaviours’; experts think he may have been responding to a bad dream

Reading Time:2 minutes

An octopus in an unspecified location. A similar creature has been filmed in a New York laboratory, possibly having a nightmare. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 11:40pm, 28 May 2023

Scientists observed unusual behaviour in an octopus that they said looked similar to it waking up from a nightmare.

The cephalopod, named Costello, was filmed 24 hours a day in a laboratory at The Rockefeller University in New York over the course of a month.

On four occasions, the animal awoke “abruptly” before engaging “in antipredator and predatory behaviours,” changing colour, and flailing his arms around erratically, researchers said in a paper published last week on the website bioRxiv.

In two of the instances the octopus shot black ink into the water – a common tactic used to escape from predators – despite there being no predator present.

The behaviour suggested that it was in temporary distress, which scientists said could suggest he was responding to a bad dream.

“It was really bizarre, because it looked like he was in pain; it looked like he might have been suffering, for a moment,” Eric Angel Ramos, one of the researchers, told Live Science.