# First person – Ashley Gendreau

## TL;DR

This paper discusses how octopuses use their arms to find and manipulate hidden objects, as explained by first author Ashley Gendreau.

## Contribution

The study contributes new insights into octopus behavior and arm coordination when interacting with visually hidden items.

## Key findings

- Octopuses use additional arms to locate hidden items.
- The recruitment of extra arms is a strategic behavior for manipulation.
- This behavior highlights complex sensory and motor coordination in octopuses.

## Abstract

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Ashley Gendreau is first author on ‘
How octopuses use and recruit additional arms to find and manipulate visually hidden items’, published in BIO. Ashley is a research assistant in the lab of Dr Roger Hanlon at Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, USA, investigating marine biology and animal behavior, with a focus on how animals sense, move through and interact with their environments.