Natalia Mesa was previously an intern at The Scientist and now freelances. She has a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s in biological sciences from Cornell ...

The octopus just revealed another one of its secrets ... "This indicates that their common ancestor had this similar sex determination system," Coffing said. That's somewhat unusual for sex ...

While an octopus-dominated future may seem "improbable ... That would namely be us humans, whose distant ancestors were initially aquatic before becoming land-based mammals.

The octopus can produce an endless array of patterns ... ScienceDaily previously reported that the ancestor of octopuses and humans was the same primitive flatworm that trawled the sea floor ...