Diver shot an incredible footage of two octopuses fighting. The brawl lasts for almost a minute before the larger specimen overpowers its rival, killing it with a bite from its fearsome beak before dragging its lifeless corpse away into the darkness.
6 days old, already more than 8000 views on youtube !
is it cannibalism ?
Many sources talk about cannibalism. The dailystar use for example the title: “INCREDIBLE footage shot by a scuba diver shows the moment an octopus killed and ate its rival during an underwater fight to the death”.
To me, the video is not crystal clear: the larger octopus definitely uses its beak to administer the final blow, but after that it seems more likely that its transports the dead corpse. If you watch closely, the corpse is located at the tips of the tentacles, not inside the octopus’ mantle. So not cannibalism.
In [most] cases, the predator octopus was much bigger […]. Once captured and dead, the prey was transported to the den which in turn was plugged with stones of different sizes. The predator began to eat its victim by the tips of the arms.
So even if we didn’t witness actual cannibalism, the act could have happened afterwards.
Is cannibalism disgusting/pure barbarism ?
In our case, I would definitely say no. It is actually very intelligent and down-the-earth. Indeed: 1) the other octopus is already dead anyway, 2) octopuses are higher per-gram in protein than mussels, 3) opening mussels and capturing other small preys is tricky and energy consuming.
So it seems logical not to let the corpse drift on the floor for someone else to eat, but to eat it oneself. Right ?
With no hard body parts apart from a beak, an octopus can morph into a dazzling array of shapes and squeeze through openings only slightly bigger than one of its eyes.
“The octopus is sometimes said to be a good illustration of the importance of a theoretical movement in psychology known as embodied cognition. One of its central ideas is that our body, rather than our brain, is responsible for some of the ´smartness´ with which we handle the world. The joints and angles of our limbs, for example, make motions such as walking naturally arise. Knowing how to walk is partly a matter of having the right body.
But the doctrines of the embodied cognition movement do not really fit well with the strangeness of the octopus’s way of being. Defenders of embodied cognition often say that the body’s shape and organization encode information. But that requires that there be a shape to the body. An octopus can stand tall on its arms, squeeze through a hole little bigger than one of its eyes, become a streamlined missile or fold itself to fit into a jar.
Further, in an octopus, it is not clear where the brain itself begins and ends. The octopus is suffused with nervousness; the body is not a separate thing that is controlled by the brain or nervous system. The usual debate is between those who see the brain as an all-powerful CEO and those who emphasize the intelligence stored in the body itself. But the octopus lives outside both the usual pictures.
It has a body - but one that is protean, all possibility; it has none of the costs and gains of a constraining and action-guiding body. The octopus lives outside the usual body/brain divide.”
If not amazing enough, there´are tales involving escape and thievery - “When you work with fish, they have no idea they are in a tank, somewhere unnatural. With octopuses it is totally different. They know that they are inside this special place, and you are outside it. All their behaviors are affected by their awareness of captivity.” - and they are able to recognize humans. The Mind of an Octopus.
