A new analysis of underwater videos shows squids that are “incredible multitasker”

Almost every arm will do for an octopus.

New research results show that squids have the opportunity to use their eight limbs to perform tasks such as reaching, tipping toe or grasp.

“These animals are incredible multitasker, so that they can carry out several actions on one arm and on several arms at the same time,” said Kendra Buresch, research biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Author of the Study. “Some other animals have different specializations for different parts of the body, while the squid is really suitable to use one of their arms in every situation.”

The results published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports show new details about how the famous flexible creatures coordinate some of the most complex movements in the animal kingdom. Further research could help scientists to understand how the animals developed so neurologically complex motor skills.

The work can also help build robots for medical applications or difficult to achieve. Ink fish are increasingly being used as inspiration for soft robots, and this new inventory of arm movements could give engineers new insights, according to the authors of the study.

The researchers found that each arm could make a complete selection of movements. Ink fish that were supported with their front arms (about 60% to 40%) above the back arms. They used their front arms more often to explore and their back arms for movement. The cephalopods showed no preference between their right and left arms.

In order to understand the movements of the animals, researchers from the Florida Atlantic University and the Marine Biological Laboratory Featmy Feature tested by wild ink fishing that roam the sea floor, and analyzed frames like a football coach could break a complicated game.

Initially, the researchers collected one -minute videos of 25 wild ink fishing from 2007 to 2015 in Spain, Südflorida, Cayman Islands and elsewhere. Divers filmed the creatures when they explored or moved through reefs, sea grass and the Sandy Ocean Ocean Floor.

The researchers evaluated every video framework for framework to create a game for certain arm movements such as stical, lowering or rolling-the animal performed different behaviors such as standing or moving of a rock.

They broke down how the animals bent, withdraw or stretch out different parts of a single limb from the base near the head to the tip of each arm.

Every minute of the video took hours to analyze, said Buresch. The researchers catalogized a total of 3,907 arm actions, which required 6,871 arm deformations.

The inventory of the arm movement of the animals could help researchers better understand the neuronal connections that enable ink fishing to coordinate their arms in order to work in different combinations and get feedback from the environment.

Ink fish have a complex and poorly understood nervous system with nerves that run down each of their eight arms. Suckers on each arm give the animals a feeling of touch, but also have chemoreceptors that enable them to taste essentially after touch.

“When I am an inkfish, I use my arms to walk over surfaces, to put them in holes in the sea floor, to look in crevices in coral heads or rocks and fields and to feel there, but mainly feel around there to see what happens,” said Buressch.

Inkfish have a decentralized nervous system with more neurons in their arms than in their central brain, said Buresch.

“We all somehow start to put together the different parts of the puzzle that explain: How does this bizarre nervous system work?”

This article was originally published on nbcnews.com