How smart is an octopus anyhow?

[Catherine]

I forgot that people eat octopus. I grew up on the prairies so we never ate things like that.

I wonder about people and their attitude towards animal intelligence. There is a lot of evidence that many animals are very intelligent. We know that even though we really don't have any good methods of testing animal intelligence.

How do you measure octopus intelligence. Our standard intelligence tests don't work for all humans. They presuppose a certain cultural background and dexterity. So the numbers are not meaningful in most cases.
Clearly an octopus is clever if he can sneak out and feed and then go back to his own tank. There are lots of people who are not that clever.

We can't test animal intelligence because animals are not interested in a lot of what we do. Dogs are the only creatures that take us seriously. Cats certainly don't.