Tiny Fish Filmed Mimicking Octopus That Mimics Fish

A new film captures a circular game of copycat: a fish that mimics an octopus that mimics fish.

First described by scientists in 1998, the remarkable mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) can shift its shape, movements and color to impersonate toxic lionfish, flatfish and even sea snakes. Such mimicry allows it to swim in the open with relatively little fear of predators.

The black-marble jawfish (Stalix histrio), on the other hand, is a small, timid fish. It spends most of its adult life close to a sand burrow that serves as its hideout if a predator comes along.

"All jawfish are really specialized for living in burrows," said researcher Luiz Rocha, an ichthyologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. "They're almost never found outside their burrows."

Read More:  http://www.livescience.com/17745-fish-mimics-octopus.html

The octopus' 'human-like' intelligence

The eight-armed mollusk can use tools, recognize humans, and even play games. Time to bow down before our new cephalopod overlords?

Octopuses are smarter than we thought. A mounting pile of evidence suggests that the eight-armed sea creatures exhibit a number of "human-like" tendencies that put them on the same intellectual plane as the wilier house pets. Here's why scientists have new respect for invertebrate cephalopods:

What "human-like" tendencies have been exhibited?
One octopus in captivity was observed "cleaning the front of its den" after securing food, then carefully arranging rocks to cover the entrance before going to sleep. Such an endeavor requires "foresight, planning," and "even tool use," says Sy Montgomery at Orion Magazine. In another study, octopuses "learned to open childproof caps on Extra Strength Tylenol Pill bottles — a feat that eludes many humans."

Read more here ...

Transparent Octopus Goes Opaque in Blink of an Eye

Two deep-ocean species of cephalopod, an octopus and a squid, can go from transparent to opaque in the blink of an eye, a new study finds.

This impressive camouflage swap is an adaptation that likely keeps the cephalopods safe from two different types of predators. The first are deep-sea creatures that hunt by looking upward for prey silhouetted against the light filtering down through thousands of feet of water. The second are fish that spotlight prey in "biological" headlights. These fish use bioluminescence, their own body-driven light source, to hunt for food.

To avoid being seen as a dark silhouette, it pays to be transparent, said study researcher Sarah Zylinski, a postdoctoral scientist at Duke University in North Carolina. But when a bioluminescent light hits a transparent surface, the effect would be like a flashlight shining on a windowpane at night, Zylinski said: very reflective, and extremely obvious.

"Being pigmented is the best strategy at that point," Zylinski told LiveScience. The octopus and squid species essentially have the best of both worlds, she said: "Being able to switch very rapidly between the two enables you to optimize your camouflage."

Masters of disguise
Many octopus, squid, cuttlefish and other cephalopods have the ability to rapidly change colors to disguise themselves from predators. Some octopus species even mimic the shapes of various fish and other sea life.

But those are all shallow-water creatures. Zylinski and her colleagues wanted to look deeper, at animals that live about 2,000 to 3,000 feet (600 to 1,000 meters) below the ocean surface. There is little light at this depth, though enough light filters down so that sharp-eyed fish can swim below prey, peering upwards and look for shadowy silhouettes.

On board research vessels in both the Sea of Cortez and over the Peru-Chile trench, Zylinski waited for deep trawling nets to pull catches out of the water. The nets are raised with painstaking slowness, Zylinski said, so that the pressure and light changes are not so abrupt for the animals caught inside.

"It's a bit like Christmas, because you never know what you're going to get in the net," she said.

"Sometimes it's like that really bad Christmas where you don't get what you want, and sometimes it's really exciting."

Presto-chango
When Zylinski scored a cephalopod catch, she quickly moved the animals from the dark nets into a dark, cool room so as not to expose them to daylight or boat lights. Then she tried various methods of stimulating color changes.

"The first set of experiments I did, we were using the kinds of stimuli that I would expect to get a response from shallow animals," Zylinski said, including looming objects or shadows passing overhead.

Read more ...

Paul the Octopus gets memorialized

Tentacled tipster immortalized by aquarium

Thursday, 20 Jan 2011, 6:11 PM EST

BERLIN (AP) - Paul the celebrated octopus has finally got his tentacles wrapped around a soccer ball.

The Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen on Thursday unveiled an outsized memorial to the World Cup's most unlikely star: A 6 1/2-foot (2-meter) tall plastic replica of Paul clutching a ball in his eight arms.

Aquarium spokeswoman Tanja Munzig says Paul's cremated ashes were placed in a gold-leaf-covered urn inside the ball. Paul died three months ago and Munzig says fans around the world had asked for a memorial.

Paul correctly tipped the outcome of all seven of Germany's games at last year's World Cup plus the Spain-Netherlands final. He made his predictions by opening the lid of one of two boxes, each containing a mussel and bearing a team flag.

http://www.myndytv.com/dpps/strange_news/strange/paul-the-octopus-gets-memorialilzed-wd11-tvw_3701711

Paul the Octopus gets memorialized

Tentacled tipster immortalized by aquarium

Thursday, 20 Jan 2011, 6:11 PM EST

BERLIN (AP) - Paul the celebrated octopus has finally got his tentacles wrapped around a soccer ball.

The Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen on Thursday unveiled an outsized memorial to the World Cup's most unlikely star: A 6 1/2-foot (2-meter) tall plastic replica of Paul clutching a ball in his eight arms.

Aquarium spokeswoman Tanja Munzig says Paul's cremated ashes were placed in a gold-leaf-covered urn inside the ball. Paul died three months ago and Munzig says fans around the world had asked for a memorial.

Paul correctly tipped the outcome of all seven of Germany's games at last year's World Cup plus the Spain-Netherlands final. He made his predictions by opening the lid of one of two boxes, each containing a mussel and bearing a team flag.

http://www.myndytv.com/dpps/strange_news/strange/paul-the-octopus-gets-memorialilzed-wd11-tvw_3701711

Psychic octopus death conspiracy claim

Paul the octopus is dead – but conspiracy theories are thriving


Death of psychic octopus who proved a hit during the World Cup triggers claim of cover-up


No sooner had death's tentacles slackened their grip on Paul's squidgy body than the first conspiracy theory concerning his demise emerged like a cephalopod from a crevice.

Not everyone, it seems, is prepared to accept the news that the "psychic" octopus – who made such a splash over the summer by successfully predicting the results of World Cup games – passed away on Monday in the comfort of the German aquarium he called home.

According to Jiang Xiao, the director of a forthcoming thriller entitled Who Killed Paul the Octopus?, the creature had really been dead for the last three months. Jiang told the Guardian she was "60 to 70% sure" Paul had died in July and been secretly replaced by his keepers.

Explaining how such a deception could have been perpetrated, she added: "[Octopuses] all look the same. It is impossible to tell the difference."

Jiang said she thought it was "kind of strange" that news of Paul's death had broken not long after the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre in western Germany had contacted her team to say they were keen to co-operate on the international distribution of her film.

"We have been keeping in touch with the German aquarium ever since the beginning [of production] but it seemed to me that they were afraid," she said. "The movie is about unveiling the inside story behind the octopus miracle, so they felt nervous.

"For the movie, we had done quite a lot of investigation and I am 60% to 70% sure that Paul died on 9 July [two days before the World Cup final] and the Germans have been covering up his death and fooling us for a long time."

Jiang declined to explain why she believed Paul had died in July — or to say more about the revelations in the movie. Her allegations of submarine jiggery-pokery met with polite bafflement in Germany today.

"It's certainly not true that Paul died in the summer," said a spokeswoman for the aquarium.

"We can absolutely assure you that he died last night. He was about two and a half, which is the average age for an octopus. He died a simple and straightforward death."

Paul is due to be cremated in the next few days. His ashes will be placed in an urn and displayed in a shrine, along with a portrait and video clips from his life, the spokeswoman added.

"We've already set up a condolence book where people can write their tributes to Paul," she said.

But what of the rumours that Paul had pulled off one last magnificent psychic coup by predicting his own death?

"If he did, he kept it to himself," she said.

Tania Branigan in Beijing, Kate Connolly in Berlin and Sam Jones

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010 18.19 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/26/paul-octopus-dead-psychic-world

Psychic octopus death conspiracy claim

Paul the octopus is dead – but conspiracy theories are thriving


Death of psychic octopus who proved a hit during the World Cup triggers claim of cover-up


No sooner had death's tentacles slackened their grip on Paul's squidgy body than the first conspiracy theory concerning his demise emerged like a cephalopod from a crevice.

Not everyone, it seems, is prepared to accept the news that the "psychic" octopus – who made such a splash over the summer by successfully predicting the results of World Cup games – passed away on Monday in the comfort of the German aquarium he called home.

According to Jiang Xiao, the director of a forthcoming thriller entitled Who Killed Paul the Octopus?, the creature had really been dead for the last three months. Jiang told the Guardian she was "60 to 70% sure" Paul had died in July and been secretly replaced by his keepers.

Explaining how such a deception could have been perpetrated, she added: "[Octopuses] all look the same. It is impossible to tell the difference."

Jiang said she thought it was "kind of strange" that news of Paul's death had broken not long after the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre in western Germany had contacted her team to say they were keen to co-operate on the international distribution of her film.

"We have been keeping in touch with the German aquarium ever since the beginning [of production] but it seemed to me that they were afraid," she said. "The movie is about unveiling the inside story behind the octopus miracle, so they felt nervous.

"For the movie, we had done quite a lot of investigation and I am 60% to 70% sure that Paul died on 9 July [two days before the World Cup final] and the Germans have been covering up his death and fooling us for a long time."

Jiang declined to explain why she believed Paul had died in July — or to say more about the revelations in the movie. Her allegations of submarine jiggery-pokery met with polite bafflement in Germany today.

"It's certainly not true that Paul died in the summer," said a spokeswoman for the aquarium.

"We can absolutely assure you that he died last night. He was about two and a half, which is the average age for an octopus. He died a simple and straightforward death."

Paul is due to be cremated in the next few days. His ashes will be placed in an urn and displayed in a shrine, along with a portrait and video clips from his life, the spokeswoman added.

"We've already set up a condolence book where people can write their tributes to Paul," she said.

But what of the rumours that Paul had pulled off one last magnificent psychic coup by predicting his own death?

"If he did, he kept it to himself," she said.

Tania Branigan in Beijing, Kate Connolly in Berlin and Sam Jones

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010 18.19 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/26/paul-octopus-dead-psychic-world

Paul the Psychic Octopus dead

Paul the octopus, an unlikely star of the 2010 World Cup who 'predicted' the outcome of seven matches, has died at an aquarium in Germany.

Staff at the Sea Life centre in Oberhausen said they were "devastated" to learn that he had passed away during the night.

Paul made his name by successfully choosing a mussel from one of two boxes bearing the flags of competing nations.

Octopuses rarely live beyond two years so his death was not unexpected.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11626050

Paul the Psychic Octopus dead

Paul the octopus, an unlikely star of the 2010 World Cup who 'predicted' the outcome of seven matches, has died at an aquarium in Germany.

Staff at the Sea Life centre in Oberhausen said they were "devastated" to learn that he had passed away during the night.

Paul made his name by successfully choosing a mussel from one of two boxes bearing the flags of competing nations.

Octopuses rarely live beyond two years so his death was not unexpected.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11626050

Mark Wahlberg's son attacked by a giant octopus

Actor Mark Wahlberg's son got attacked by a giant octopus.

The Other Guys star appeared on US TV programme The Late Show with David Letterman last night and revealed how a recent trip to a Californian aquarium did not go to plan when his son Michael, 4, got attacked.

Wahlberg said: "We have a tour guide so she's like, 'You have a special treat today, we'll be able to take you behind the tank and you'll be able to see the octopus'.

"So this women pulls out this gigantic octopus, the thing latches on to my son's arm, it's got my wife, [it's] wrapped completely around the lady, and another guy's just standing there.

"They can't get this octopus off."

Mark, 39, added: "Once the woman who handles the octopus starts freaking out I knew there was a problem.

"Once I got my kid out of there I said, 'Let's go!' I left the lady there."

Oracle octopus gets own World Cup for winning streak

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN | Mon Jul 12, 2010 2:04pm BST

BERLIN (Reuters) - Paul the oracle octopus was given a replica of the World Cup on Monday as a reward for his perfect eight-for-eight record in picking matches as worldwide collected their winnings based on his selections.

The two-year-old octopus with possible psychic powers turned into a worldwide celebrity for accurately predicting the winner of Germany's five World Cup wins as well as their two defeats. Paul also tipped Spain to beat Netherlands in Sunday's final.

"We've had a lot of offers for Paul but he will definitely be staying with us and returning to his old job -- making children smile," Sea Life spokeswoman Tanja Munzig in Oberhausen told Reuters after presenting Paul with the World Cup replica.

"There's no rational reason why he always got it right."

Bettors around the world made small fortunes based on Paul's uncanny picks, said Graham Sharpe, media relations director at William Hill in London.

"I've seen a lot of things in my lifetime but this is the first time I've ever seen people making their picks based on what an octopus tells them," Sharpe told Reuters.

"We had people coming in saying they didn't know how to place a bet but heard about this German octopus and wanted to bet with him. It's ludicrous. But he kept getting it right," said Sharpe. "It's one of the finest tipping feats ever."

Sharpe said that anyone who had placed a 10-pound accumulator bet on Paul's picks from the start of the World Cup would have won 3,000 pounds by the end of the tournament.

Paul's home at Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen has been inundated with visitors and media from across Europe. Many networks broadcast his picks live. Hundreds were on hand to watch the World Cup replica lowered into his tank on Monday.

WINNING BETS

"Paul now wants to say good-bye to the whole world," Daniel Fey, a supervisor at Sea Life, told Reuters. "He really enjoyed all the media attention but now he's returning to his old job."

Yet interest in the 50-cm long octopus remained intense, especially after his last two picks on Friday were once again accurate. Germany won Saturday's match for third place and Spain won Sunday's final -- as Paul had called it on Friday.

Last week Germans were shocked and distraught when he picked Spain to beat Germany in the semi-final after tipping German wins over Argentina, England, Ghana and Australia.

And after Spain beat Germany, many wanted to publicly grill him. Sea Life installed extra security to protect their octopus.

"We have to remember he's quite old now -- 2-1/2 years is quite old for an octopus," Fey said.

Probability experts were quoted in media reports saying the likelihood of getting eight consecutive picks right is 1/256. Sharpe said the odds of getting eight straight right was over 1/300. Humbled professors were quoted saying Paul got lucky.

The octopus, considered by some to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates, had a choice of picking food from two different transparent containers lowered into his tank -- each with a national flag on it.

The container Paul opened first was regarded as his pick.

Sharpe at William Hill said he had at first been sceptical about the oracle octopus. But he became a believer.

"I suspect that Paul's predictions could have made about a half a million pounds," Sharpe said, adding he estimated William Hill paid out 100,000 pounds on his picks at its 2,300 outlets.

"We had people coming in asking who Paul had picked before they placed their bets," Sharpe said. "I'm sure there were a lot more people too who were too embarrassed to tell you they made their bet based on what the octopus said."

He said it was the first time in 30 years of work that he had seen "such widely orchestrated use of a non-human tipster."

Sharpe said he, unfortunately, did not follow Paul's advice. "It'd have been too embarrassing," he said. But Sharpe said he was going on holiday soon. "I'm going to the seaside and intend to eat as much octopus as I can cram down as revenge," he said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6673H820100712

Psychic octopus predicts Spain to beat Germany

July 6, 2010 5:00 PM

A "psychic" octopus with an uncanny ability to predict the result of World Cup football matches has tipped Spain to beat Germany in the semi-final.

Paul the octopus, from he Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany has so far correctly predicted all the games involving the national team.

His predictions involve handlers at the attraction putting two boxes of tasty mussels into his tank, each with the flag of one team on the front.

The mussels he goes for first are then taken to be his "psychic" prediction and bookies claim many people even place bets on the back of them.

However, the creature has a less then perfect record when these two teams meet - during Euro 2008 he wrongly picked Germany as the victor against Spain. If he is right this time he could end up in a paella.

LINKS
SeaLife

http://newslite.tv/2010/07/06/psychic-octopus-predicts-spain.html

Paul the octopus is a sucker pundit

By Josh Layton 26/06/2010

England's World Cup hopes have been dealt a blow - by a psychic octopus.

Paul the octopus has correctly predicted all of Germany's wins and defeats in the World Cup so far - and he is tipping them to beat Fabio Capello's team tomorrow.

To get his predictions, food is lowered into Paul's tank in two containers with the flag of each country on the front. The one he goes for is his tip to win.

For this last 16 clash in Bloemfontein, Paul opted for a mussel in a glass of water marked with the black, red and yellow flag of our fierce rivals.

To rub salt in England's wounds, twoyear-old Paul lives in Oberhausen Sea Life centre in Germany but is originally from Weymouth, Dorset.

The centre's Tanja Munzig, who looks after the creature, said: "For the European Championship in 2008 Paul's success rate was more than 80% for Germany games.

"And for this World Cup, he has had a 100% success rate so far." She'll probably shell out a few squid on the result.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/06/26/paul-the-octopus-is-a-sucker-pundit-115875-22361809/
(Submitted by Mark North)

Octopus steals underwater camera from diver - while it's recording

Tom Phillips - 21st April, 2010

A New Zealand diver was forced to chase an underwater camera-stealing octopus which wrestled his brand new device from his hands and swam away, with the camera still recording.

The incredible video gives a tentacle-covered view of the five-minute chase, which only ended after the diver used his speargun to prise the camera back from the thieving octopus's grip.

Victor Huang was diving near the Wahine Memorial off the south coast of Wellington on Thursday when the octopus suddenly burst out of a bed of kelp. Huang 'freaked out' at first as he thought the octopus was attacking him - before realising that the octopus was actually just after his shiny new Panasonic Lumix camera.

A wrestling match ensued between the two as Huang tried to hold onto the camera as the octopus attempted to prise it from his grip. And in the end, the tentacle proved too strong - and the octopus 'swam away very quickly like a naughty shoplifter', Hung said on his YouTube video of the event.

The video then shows the camera's-eye view of the chase that followed - mostly covered in suckers - as Huang frantically swam after the octopus in an attempt to get his camera back.

It took five minute for him to catch up with the creature, at which point he managed to get his speargun under the creature and, when it grabbed hold of that as well, use it to pry the camera from its grasp.

He then spent a few more minutes taking the octopus for a ride on his speargun, which he says the octopus seemed to enjoy. He doesn't think the octopus meant him any harm - it had just become fascinated by the gadget.

'I honestly believe that it saw the bright blue digital camera and went ‘oh I need that’, you know?' Huang told stuff.co.nz.

Chef finds octopus with extra leg

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - Nineopus. Novopus. Freak of nature.

Whatever you want to call it, the nine-legged octopus probably had a leg up on all the other creatures in the Gulf of Mexico -- until it was caught and found its way to Hellas Bakery and Restaurant in Florida.

Head Chef Emmanuel Psomas says he was steaming the octopus Thursday when he discovered that it seemed, well, leggier than normal. Psomas says he's cooked octopus for 40 years -- it's a Greek delicacy -- and has never seen one with an extra leg.

He says he counted the legs three times in disbelief.

"I'm like, this can't be," Psomas said. "I've seen a lot of octopus."

He's keeping the octopus in his refrigerator for now, but he plans to enjoy it soon with a bit of vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil and herbs.

While unusual, marine experts say the extra leg on the octopus is likely due to genetic mutation.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2010/04/03/13453656-ap.html

HDTV reveals brainy octopus has no personality

12:32 12 March 2010 by Shanta Barley

Octopuses make for discerning TV viewers: it seems they prefer high-definition to traditional cathode ray images (CRT). What's more, the first study using video to trick octopuses, finds that they may be the Jekyll and Hydes of the oceans: aggressive one day, shrinking violets the next.

"People have been trying for over a decade to get proper behavioural responses from octopuses and other cephalopods using videos," says Roger Hanlon, an octopus researcher at the Marine Resources Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. "But this is the first time anyone has managed it."

Gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) reacted to films shown on liquid crystal high definition television (HDTV) as if they were seeing the real thing, according to a new study by Renata Pronk at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. "They lunge forwards to attack crabs and back off from other octopuses, much as they do in the wild," says Hanlon.

Surprisingly, an octopus that was bold, aggressive and exploratory on one day was just as likely to be shy, submissive and stationary the next. "This suggests that the gloomy octopus does not have personality," writes Pronk in the new study.

No personality

By "personality", researchers mean consistency in behaviour. You might expect an individual to respond to crabs, other octopuses, jars, for example, by being consistently bold, shy or aggressive.

In contrast, the octopuses in Pronk's study were more moody than gloomy. The team captured 31 gloomy octopuses in Sydney harbour and showed them a set of 3-minute videos displayed on a screen at the front of their tank. The videos were filmed at 50 frames per second and featured a crab (their prey), another gloomy octopus, a jar and a water-filled aquarium.

Previous attempts to get octopuses to respond to videos failed, probably because they used CRT, which displays footage at a rate of 24 frames per second – too slowly for their sophisticated eyes. "The images that they see on CRT screens are incomplete and probably incoherent," says Hanlon.

To Pronk's surprise, the octopuses behaved as if animals in the film were real. They lunged forwards at crabs using jet propulsion, often striking the front of the aquarium. But when they saw films of other octopuses, which they avoid in the wild, they cowered behind a terracotta pot placed in the aquarium.

Octopuses that reacted to one film aggressively tended to respond to all films on a particular day in the same way. But over longer periods of time, any trace of "personality" or consistency evaporated. They might react aggressively one day, but much less so on another day. "It's a bit of a surprise," says Hanlon. Other cephalopods, such as the dumpling squid, display consistent personalities for most of their lives.

Huge brains

This lack of consistent behaviour may be related to octopuses's huge brain size, relative to other cephalopods. Big brains may "afford octopuses considerable behavioural flexibility that allows them to change their behaviour adaptively over time," write the researchers.

Lack of personality may not necessarily be a bad thing. They live in dynamic environments (shallow coastal waters and reefs) and "these conditions may select for behavioural flexibility as individuals could then optimise their behaviour in a variety of typical environmental conditions". For example, behaving shyly may be an octopus's best response when it is threatened by a predator, but behaving boldly may be the best behaviour when foraging.

Hormones may drive short-term changes in the octopuses' behaviour from day to day, the authors also speculate.

The new video technology used in the experiment could help to settle several long-standing debates, says Hanlon. "For example, scientists have debated since 1992 whether or not an octopus can learn behaviours simply by watching each other," he says. "This technology will open many doors."

Journal reference: The Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.040675

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18640-hdtv-reveals-brainy-octopus-has-no-personality.html
(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Deadly octopus turns up in girl's bath

January 12, 2010

A six-year-old Melbourne girl's weekend hobby has almost turned deadly.

Holly Smith was washing a shell she'd collected at Point Lonsdale beach on Sunday when a blue-ringed octopus fell into her bathtub.

The Geelong Advertiser reports the girl was washing a large, curled periwinkle shell when the deadly octopus fell into the bath.

The blue-ringed octopus is recognised as one of the world's most venomous animals and can cause paralysis in humans within minutes.

The girl's father, Justin Smith, was understandably alarmed by the incident.

"It was just a complete surprise that my daughter's hobby, which I'd been watching in a relaxed manner, turned out to be one that in future I'll need to be watching much more carefully," he told the Geelong Advertiser.

Holly told Channel Seven, "The octopus just plopped out."

"It would have poisoned us," she said.

Holly says she'll keep collecting shells but will be more careful, and is taking the preserved octopus into school for 'show and tell'.

Her mum reiterated that it's a good warning.

Blue-ringed octopuses are common throughout Australia and rest in quiet places before feeding at night.

A bite from the octopus is often relatively painless and may go unnoticed.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/queensland/a/-/latest/6670257/deadly-octopus-turns-up-in-girls-bath/

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

Photo: Jens Petersen

Monday, 14 December 2009

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia's Museum Victoria, told BBC News: "I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time."

He added: "I could tell it was going to do something, but I didn't expect this - I didn't expect it would pick up the shell and run away with it."

Quick getaway

The veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) were filmed between 1999 and 2008 off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia. The bizarre behaviour was spotted on four occasions.

The eight-armed beasts used halved coconuts that had been discarded by humans and had eventually settled in the ocean.

Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: "It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out."

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell - or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other - before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

Dr Norman said: "I think it is amazing that those arms of pure muscle get turned into rigid rods so that they can run along a bit like a high-speed spider.

"It comes down to amazing dexterity and co-ordination of eight arms and several hundred suckers."

Home, sweet home

The octopuses were filmed moving up to 20m with the shells.

And their awkward gait, which the scientists describe as "stilt-walking", is surprisingly speedy, possibly because the creatures are left vulnerable to attack from predators while they scuttle away with their prized coconuts.

The octopuses eventually use the shells as a protective shelter. If they just have one half, they simply turn it over and hide underneath. But if they are lucky enough to have retrieved two halves, they assemble them back into the original closed coconut form and sneak inside.

The shells provide important protection for the octopuses in a patch of seabed where there are few places to hide.

Dr Norman explained: "This is an incredibly dangerous habitat for these animals - soft sediment and mud couldn't be worse.

"If they are buried loose in mud without a shell, any predator coming along can just scoop them up. And they are pure rump steak, a terrific meat supply for any predator."

The researchers think that the creatures would initially have used large bivalve shells as their haven, but later swapped to coconuts after our insatiable appetite for them meant their discarded shells became a regular feature on the sea bed.

Surprisingly smart

Tool use was once thought to be an exclusively human skill, but this behaviour has now been observed in a growing list of primates, mammals and birds.

The researchers say their study suggests that these coconut-grabbing octopuses should now be added to these ranks.

Professor Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Exeter, UK, and another author of the paper, said: "A tool is something an animal carries around and then uses on a particular occasion for a particular purpose.

"While the octopus carries the coconut around there is no use to it - no more use than an umbrella is to you when you have it folded up and you are carrying it about. The umbrella only becomes useful when you lift it above your head and open it up.

"And just in the same way, the coconut becomes useful to this octopus when it stops and turns it the other way up and climbs inside it."

He added that octopuses already have a reputation for being an intelligent invertebrate.

He explained: "They've been shown to be able to solve simple puzzles, there is the mimic octopus, which has a range of different species that it can mimic, and now there is this tool use.

"They do things which, normally, you'd only expect vertebrates to do."

See video at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8408233.stm

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

Photo: Jens Petersen

Monday, 14 December 2009

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia's Museum Victoria, told BBC News: "I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time."

He added: "I could tell it was going to do something, but I didn't expect this - I didn't expect it would pick up the shell and run away with it."

Quick getaway

The veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) were filmed between 1999 and 2008 off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia. The bizarre behaviour was spotted on four occasions.

The eight-armed beasts used halved coconuts that had been discarded by humans and had eventually settled in the ocean.

Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: "It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out."

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell - or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other - before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

Dr Norman said: "I think it is amazing that those arms of pure muscle get turned into rigid rods so that they can run along a bit like a high-speed spider.

"It comes down to amazing dexterity and co-ordination of eight arms and several hundred suckers."

Home, sweet home

The octopuses were filmed moving up to 20m with the shells.

And their awkward gait, which the scientists describe as "stilt-walking", is surprisingly speedy, possibly because the creatures are left vulnerable to attack from predators while they scuttle away with their prized coconuts.

The octopuses eventually use the shells as a protective shelter. If they just have one half, they simply turn it over and hide underneath. But if they are lucky enough to have retrieved two halves, they assemble them back into the original closed coconut form and sneak inside.

The shells provide important protection for the octopuses in a patch of seabed where there are few places to hide.

Dr Norman explained: "This is an incredibly dangerous habitat for these animals - soft sediment and mud couldn't be worse.

"If they are buried loose in mud without a shell, any predator coming along can just scoop them up. And they are pure rump steak, a terrific meat supply for any predator."

The researchers think that the creatures would initially have used large bivalve shells as their haven, but later swapped to coconuts after our insatiable appetite for them meant their discarded shells became a regular feature on the sea bed.

Surprisingly smart

Tool use was once thought to be an exclusively human skill, but this behaviour has now been observed in a growing list of primates, mammals and birds.

The researchers say their study suggests that these coconut-grabbing octopuses should now be added to these ranks.

Professor Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Exeter, UK, and another author of the paper, said: "A tool is something an animal carries around and then uses on a particular occasion for a particular purpose.

"While the octopus carries the coconut around there is no use to it - no more use than an umbrella is to you when you have it folded up and you are carrying it about. The umbrella only becomes useful when you lift it above your head and open it up.

"And just in the same way, the coconut becomes useful to this octopus when it stops and turns it the other way up and climbs inside it."

He added that octopuses already have a reputation for being an intelligent invertebrate.

He explained: "They've been shown to be able to solve simple puzzles, there is the mimic octopus, which has a range of different species that it can mimic, and now there is this tool use.

"They do things which, normally, you'd only expect vertebrates to do."

See video at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8408233.stm

Strange creatures of the deep found in underwater 'twilight zone'

Thousands of strange ceatures which exist in perpetual darkness miles below the surface of the oceans have been catalogued for the first time by scientists.

Published: 8:00AM GMT 23 Nov 2009

The Census of Marine Life, a major international project surveying the oceans, recorded 5,722 species living at depths greater than 0.62 miles where the sun never shines.

Many inhabited icy cold black realms as deep as three miles where the pressure would crush a human.

In total, 17,650 species were identified living deeper than 200 metres, the ''twilight zone'' where light barely penetrates and photosynthesis ceases to be possible.

Scientists were surprised by the diversity of life in the deepest reaches of the oceans.

Even the mud at the bottom of the ocean abyss was teeming with living things.

Among the bizarre creatures encountered by the researchers were a six foot long cirrate octopod - nicknamed ''Dumbo'' because of the large ear-like fins it uses to swim - discovered more than a mile deep on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Another was a ''wildcat'' tubeworm caught in the act of dining on crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico. When the worm was extracted by a robot arm from the sea bed, oil gushed both from the animal's body and the hole in which it was found.

Also recovered from the Atlantic was an ''indescribable'' catch of multi-coloured invertebrates, including corals, sea cucumbers and sea urchins living a kilometre below the surface.

At more than 1.7 miles down, in the northern Gulf of Mexico, scientists videoed an odd-looking transparent sea cucumber creeping forward on its many tentacles.

Dr Robert Carney, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US, one of the Census scientists, said: ''Distribution is pretty straightforward for animals in the deep sea. The composition of faunal populations changes with depth, likely a consequence of physiology, ecology and the suitability of sea-floor habitat condition for certain animals.

''Diversity is harder to understand. Although the mud on the deep sea floor appears monotonous and poor in food, that monotonous mud has a maximum of species diversity on the lower continental margin. To survive in the deep, animals must find and exploit meagre or novel resources, and their great diversity in the deep reflects how many ways there are to adapt.''

The vast majority of creatures collected in mud from the abyssal plain were new to science, said the researchers.

Of some 680 specimens of copepods collected from the south-eastern Atlantic, for example, just seven could be identified.

Among the hundreds of species of earthworm-sized macrofauna found at different sites, 50% to 85% were unrecognised.

British expert Dr David Billett, another member of the team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said: ''The abyssal fauna is so rich in species diversity and so poorly described that collecting a known species is an anomaly. Describing for the first time all the different species in any coffee cup-sized sample of deep sea sediment is a daunting challenge.''

The scientist used a range of high and low-tech hardware including robot submersibles and sea-floor rovers, coring drills, dredges and trawling nets.

The Census, which is also surveying life at shallower depths, is due to complete its work in October 2010.

Dr Chris German, one of the project leaders from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US, said: ''The deep sea is the Earth's largest continuous ecosystem and largest habitat for life. It is also the least studied.''

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6628299/Strange-creatures-of-the-deep-found-in-underwater-twilight-zone.html