Calamari Editors

It seems that octopuses, squids and cuttlefish are really good at using RNA editing to produce proteins that their genes don't code for. This interesting article argues that this flexibility may be an important component of their intelligence. It would be interesting to see if this also plays a big role in the remarkable ability of these animals to change color and camouflage themselves. However, this comes at a price, since it slows down evolution. So yeah, you can open bottles and change colors like nobody's business, but you'll always have eight tentacles growing out of your head....