If we go far enough back in evolutionary history, we encounter the last known common ancestor of humans and cephalopods: a primitive wormlike animal with minimal intelligence and simple eyespots.

23 -- THURSDAY, June 28 (HealthDay News) -- Painstaking genetic research shows that the cat first became domesticated soon after humans began ... cats appear to share a common ancestor, according ...

To understand how aliens might think, Dominic Sivitilli went to the bottom of the sea to find the closest thing: an octopus. Its sophisticated nervous systems and sensitive suckers allow it to do ...

What defining changes in the genetic code took place after we separated from our most recent ancestor? Looking at the places where all living humans share a novel genetic signature but the ...

Still, the Nature report does appear to extend the time at which these two groups of human ancestors co-existed -- to at least 500,000 years, Trinkaus said. And what of the erectus specimen's ...

A set of new studies from the University of Utah and elsewhere found that human ancestors and relatives started eating an increasingly grassy diet 3.5 million years ago. The studies included ...

An octopus' brain is on the same wavelength as ... In captivity they can learn to solve puzzles, open jars - and squirt humans they don't like. They are as smart as the average dog.

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Another unusual aspect of the blanket octopus: It’s immune to the stinging cells of the highly dangerous (to humans at least) jellyfish, the Portuguese man-of-war, which it uses to its advantage ...

A woman was bitten by the deadly blue-ringed octopus while swimming off a popular beach in Sydney. The woman, who is in her 30s, was nipped after the tiny creature fell out of a shell she picked ...