Octopi working with tools while Homo sapiens still primitive

OCTOPUSES, as I wrote in my August 24 column, are highly intelligent and learn quickly.

I quoted Dr Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate and founder of an octopus-genome study in Japan. “They were the first intelligent beings on the planet,” he said.

They have had 400m years in which to develop their brains. Humans are Johnny-Come-Latelys on Earth; the first of our species appeared, at earliest, a mere 10m ago. Homo sapiens, the only surviving human strain, replaced Homo erectus somewhere between 2m and 200,00 years ago.