Smart but Short-Lived

For all that intelligence, most octopuses live only one or two years. They breed once and die soon after. No octopus ever meets its grandparents, and none passes down a single lesson to its young.

That may be the secret. With no parents to copy and no group to learn from, every octopus has to work out survival alone, from scratch. A life that lonely and that brief may be exactly what pushed octopuses to get so clever, so fast.