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Octopus crawls out of water and walks on land
Octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton.
Mon, Dec 17 2012 at 4:28 PM
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Photo: YouTube
This amazing video of an octopus literally crawling out of the water and walking across dry land was captured at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in California. But it turns out that this behavior is not as uncommon as you might expect. Captive octopuses actually escape with alarming frequency. While on the lam, they have been discovered in teapots and even on bookshelves.
"Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor — and then run for it. Yes, run. You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat," Middlebury College researcher Alexa Warburton says. "It's so weird!"
That said, capturing the escape on film is quite rare. Mainly because studies on octopuses are so limited due to the creatures’ typical shyness and their brief lifespan of about three years.
Octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton, according to the journal Science. However, these findings all took place underwater.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if other octopus species also walk,” said Science writer Christine Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley.
It seems like they do!
Copyright Treehugger 2012
Related post on MNN: Clever octopus tames shark, unties knots
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When sharks learn to walk, we're screwed...
I, for one, welcome our new cephalopoid overlords.
This looks like the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Vancouver Aquarium had a clever one that learned to open the top of it tank and would go on night time fishing trips to other tanks - always making sure to close the top when it was done. The vanishing fish stumped them for a few weeks before they finally discovered what was going on.
Pretty clever for something that is more related to clam than it is us.
Wow! It's amazing what animals can do in their natural environment. Just imagine how awesome it would be for pets to discover and learn on their own, instead of being caged-up or fenced in.
I wish that those Dolphins captured in Taiji could do the same and scape too ....
omg NONE of this is new why does this article try giving the impression that it is. I am 43 years old and have known all my life that octopi can walk on land, rather fantastically at that when motivated, or amused by doing so. they can also think, logically, and problem solve complex solutions.... if the average octopi were any larger then a dog, we would have been bumped out of first place in the food chain eons ago.
I'm a little late to your party, but how is this statement "It turns out this behavior is not as uncommon as one might expect" trying to give the impression that this is "new?"The author has clearly stated this is NOT new, just less documented than one might hope.
So I guess "like an octopus out of water" means something else entirely...
The article mentions the it's common for octopuses to escape. Do many of them make it back to the sea?