Octopus Escape Room Challenge

The octopus: Nature’s craftiest escape artist. Is this just another preconception? Is it fact or is it fiction? We needed to design an experiment and test exactly how much skill a smart octopus would display in order to escape from a confined environment. So we sat down and devised the first ever escape room for an octopus. After all, escape rooms are great fun! If they are stimulating and entertaining for us, wouldn’t they be equally beneficial for an octopus? As always, our main concern was to ensure that the experiment is 100% safe for the octopus. Moreover, we would not allow the octopus to stay in the escape room for more than a few minutes each round in order to eliminate the possibility of him getting stressed. We chose Rudy for this experiment due to his playful character and average size. He is big enough to be streetwise, and small enough to have plenty of space to move around in the escape room. We divided the escape room challenge in four rounds, accordin