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How many brains does an octopus have?
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GPT-5 mini
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Short answer: effectively nine.
Octopuses have one central brain plus a large ganglion (a "mini‑brain") in each of their eight arms. The arms' nervous systems are highly autonomous — they can sense, taste, and control complex movements independently — and contain a large fraction of the animal's neurons. So "nine brains" is a useful shorthand, though technically it's a distributed nervous system (central brain + peripheral ganglia) rather than nine fully separate brains.
Octopuses have one central brain plus a large ganglion (a "mini‑brain") in each of their eight arms. The arms' nervous systems are highly autonomous — they can sense, taste, and control complex movements independently — and contain a large fraction of the animal's neurons. So "nine brains" is a useful shorthand, though technically it's a distributed nervous system (central brain + peripheral ganglia) rather than nine fully separate brains.
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