During a visit to the National Geographic Museum of Exploration in Washington, Leite saw a presentation asking whether octopuses dream. She said it named Australian biologist and National Geographic explorer Alexandra Schnell without acknowledging the work at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, UFRN. The column notes that Schnell had commented on the Brazilian study shortly after its publication.
Leite reported a similar omission in Secrets of the Octopus. She wrote to the society on August 25 requesting a correction; according to the column, she had received no response a month later. Her complaint argues that researchers in Latin America and other regions outside major international science centres already struggle for visibility, and that omitting the original scientists distorts the historical record.
The research appeared in iScience in 2021. Sylvia Medeiros and colleagues, supervised by Tatiana Leite and Sidarta Ribeiro, filmed sleeping adult Octopus insularis and measured alternating quiet and active sleep states.
During quiet sleep the animals remained pale and relaxed, with a median duration of 415 seconds. Active sleep had a median duration of 41 seconds and featured rapid changes in skin colour and texture alongside eye movements. The resemblance to mammalian REM sleep does not establish that octopuses experience dreams or reconstruct memories while asleep.
The columnist places the dispute against growing cultural interest in cephalopod intelligence, from Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds to the documentary My Octopus Teacher and fictional portrayals of the animals. His account distinguishes artistic depictions of consciousness and dreaming from what observations of sleep can demonstrate.