rescued a lil baby octopus that was stuck out at low tide. it clung to my finger and I put it in a mussel shell and then moved it to a deeper tide pool! hoping it’ll be alright
An ingenious octopus has been showing off his house-building skills, using bits of trash found on the seabed - a spoon, a flip-flop and some coconut shell.
The clip, filmed off the coast of the Indonesian island of Lombok, shows the crafty cephalopod dragging the items across the ocean floor and then constructing a little hut where he can hide from sharks and other predators.
The critter in question is a coconut octopus (amphioctopus marginatus), a species only discovered in 1964 and named after its habit of finding and using coconuts. This one is only about three inches long, with tentacles about six inches long, which means it can fit quit snugly into a home made of a flip-flop and a coconut shell (source).
Because of their adaptive abilities — rapid growth, short lifespans and flexible development — cephalopods are sometimes called “the weeds of the sea.” And it seems like that might be serving them well.
According to study published in Current Biology cephalopod abundance has increased since the 1950s. The reason for this growth is not yet clear, but it maybe that their adaptability has allowed them to thrive in a changing climate while other ocean dwelling populations suffer. Study author Bronwyn Gillanders says that figuring out the reason for cephalopod abundance may tell us a lot about “how human activities are changing the ocean.”
