# Octopuses Learn to Use Mirrors to Find Hidden Prey, a First for Any Invertebrate

*2026-06-06 02:00 UTC · Science · 1 min read*

> A Dartmouth study in Current Biology shows octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate hidden prey, the first such mirror-guided spatial reasoning seen in any invertebrate.

Octopuses can learn to read a mirror's reflection to locate food they cannot directly see, according to a Dartmouth study published in Current Biology. Researchers trained three California two-spot octopuses to ignore a crab image appearing in a mirror and instead move to where the hidden stimulus was actually positioned behind them. The animals reached the correct side roughly 73% of the time.

Lead author Mary Kieseler, who ran the work in Dartmouth's Octopus Lab and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, said the results are the first to show an invertebrate using a mirror to understand its surroundings and find prey. Until now, that kind of mirror-guided spatial reasoning had been documented only in vertebrates such as some mammals and birds.

The team stresses the octopuses were using mirrors as a tool to locate occluded objects, not recognizing themselves. Still, linking a visible reflection to a hidden location is a sophisticated form of mediated perception that some scientists view as a building block toward self-recognition, adding to a growing body of evidence for the cephalopod's surprising intelligence.

## Sources

- [home.dartmouth.edu](https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2026/06/study-shows-octopuses-impressive-ability-navigate-space)
- [sciencedaily.com](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260605023402.htm)
- [cell.com](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)

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