Could octopuses become the next intelligent species?

Octopuses are already extraordinarily intelligent, but it’s very unlikely they would become a human-like technological or civilization-building species.

Why it’s unlikely:

• Short lifespans: Many octopus species live only a few years, which limits how much learned behavior can accumulate and be passed on across generations.
• Little parental teaching: Octopus mothers typically guard their eggs and then die soon after the eggs hatch, so young octopuses usually have to learn on their own rather than through extended family teaching.
• Mostly solitary lives: Most octopuses are not highly social, which makes large-scale cooperation, shared labor, and cumulative culture much harder.
• Aquatic constraints: Living underwater would make key steps in human-style technological development much harder, especially anything requiring fire, metallurgy, or land-based infrastructure.

That said, octopuses are genuinely fascinating. They have very advanced nervous systems, with many neurons distributed through their arms, and they can solve puzzles, explore complex environments, and use objects for shelter.

So the short answer is: they could become even more impressive in evolutionary terms, but a human-like intelligent civilization is highly unlikely without major changes to their biology and life history.