Mattias Krantz figured out, by experiment and by seeking advice, how to teach an octopus how to play with a piano. That took about half a year. Think of it, if you like, as a case of 88 keys and eight hands, kinda sorta. This video shows dramatic highlights from the mutual adventure. (Thanks to Rachel Martin for bringing it to our attention.)
You may recognize the teaching process, which was pioneered with many other kinds of animals by psychologist B.F. Skinner and many others. One of those others, perhaps the most famous, was Karen Pryor (famed as the goddess of clicker training for dogs (and other animals, humans among them), a method that grew from her pioneering work in figuring out how to train dolphins to do many kinds of things.
Karen Pryor and B.F. Skinner each (Skinner posthumously) were awarded Ig Nobel Prizes (Skinner’s prize was accepted on his behalf by daughter Julie Skinner Vargas). The 2029 Ig Nobel Medical Education Prize was awarded to Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique — clicker training — to help new doctors acquire basic surgical skills. The 2024 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.
What’s happening in Matthias Krantz’s octopus piano video will make coherent sense if you read Karen Pryor’s book called Don’t Shoot the Dog.
The moment that Karen Pryor and her co-winner Theresa McKeon were presented their Ig Nobel Prize (handed to them by Nobel laureate Rich Roberts) is documented on the front cover of the November-December 1999 issue of Annals of Improbable Research. In the photo, Karen Pryor is the person wearing a blue dress:
