Plans to farm octopuses commercially have alarmed welfare scientists due to these animals' exceptional intelligence and the likely impossibility of meeting their complex needs in captivity.
Octopuses are among the most cognitively sophisticated invertebrates known. Their welfare needs - space, environmental complexity, social isolation, and mental stimulation - are incompatible with intensive aquaculture. Farmed octopuses show high stress, injury from conspecifics, and shortened lifespans. The global welfare science community has expressed near-unanimous concern about commercial octopus farming proposals.