Octopus Crawls Out of Water and Begins Walking on Land

Written by Jerry James Stone, Treehugger

Wow, check out this amazing video of an octopus literally crawling out of the water and walking across dry land.

It turns out this behavior is not as uncommon as one might expect. Captive octopuses 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 it on film is quite rare. Mainly because studies on octopuses are so limited due to the creature’s typical shyness and their brief life span of about three years. Back in 2005, the journal Science first published findings on this behavior. However, this was underwater. These octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton; usually they use all eight legs.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if other octopus species also walk,” said Science author Christine Huffard, from the University of California, Berkeley.

It seems like they do!

This post was originally published by Treehugger.

Over 12,000 Tons of Plastic Ingested by Fish (Video)

Save the Nautilus, A Living Fossil!

Read more: marine life, ocean, octopi, octopus, treehugger