[LeegleechN]

My understanding is that octopus limbs are semi-autonomous, whereas giraffe legs aren't doing any more decision-making than they are for people or cats.

Which is not to say that I disagree that most people underestimate animal intelligence.

[Baeocystin]

All cephalopods lack myelination in their neural toolkit. What this means is that signal propagation between neurons is between 10-100x slower than, say, a mammal, and it makes signal integration over distance a hard problem.

That evolution has found a way to achieve high relative intelligence against such a strong constraint is endlessly fascinating!