Octopuses continue their long tradition of freaking out human beings—now they’re using tools, excavating buried coconut halves (discarded by humans), tucking them under their… undersides, and “stilt-walking” them away to use as shelter.

Watch a BBC video of the behavior here.

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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.”

… 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.

Further upping the octo-ante, my little sister—a neurobiology grad student who stays up on the latest animal-testing controversies and standards—tells me:

… octopodes are considered “honorary vertebrates” in the UK, meaning they must be treated like vertebrates when writing up protocols and stuff (protocols dealing with vertebrates are more stringent about animal welfare).

They escape from their aquariums, they grab birds from the land and into tidal pools, they solve puzzles, they recognize human faces, they occasionally attack divers, and now they build little houses for themselves.

Maybe the Haida were right all along: Octopuses are the people of the sea.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

34 replies on “Put the Octopod in the Coconut”

  1. They’ve been around in one form or another for hundreds of millions of years. It would figure they’ve picked up a few tricks. Plus there’s a quality about them, a personality or self awareness, that makes them endearing.

  2. I don’t like knowing that they might be smart. It makes them even creepier than they already are, and they are pretty dang creepy.

  6. Why do we call THIS the use of tools but ignore hermit crabs employment of human refuse for protection?

    Nobody’s hailing hermit crabs as brilliant.

  12. Well, I guess I won’t be eating these guys anymore (or calamari for that matter). And too bad for me because I love the taste of them… but I’ve been having a difficult time for a while now reconciling their intelligence and capacity for emotion with their tastiness. This video seals the deal. Let’s hope salmon don’t suddenly start using tools or my list of acceptable animal proteins is gonna be non-existent!

  20. @17: 5280, I guess if you make up your own language you can put the damned apostrophes wherever you want, eh? (Nyarlathotep says you got it right, LOL!)

  24. You know what else they do? They decorate the ground in front of their burrows. They set up aesthetically pleasing little displays of rocks and plants so they have something to look at when they come out to look for crabs to eat. (Cue “Octopus’ Garden” by the Beatles)

  26. They use tools, they learn by observation, they can distingush between friendly scientists and dissect-y scientists, they have a bizarre nervous system that leaves them with no concept of where the different parts of their body are relative to one another AND they’re super-cool awesome looking alienlike things.

    I love these tentacly rapscallions! Love them!

  28. I’m a marine biologist. Octopuses are very smart critters. I used to feed the GPOs at the Seattle aquarium when I was a volunteer there, and they definitely saw me coming.

    That’s not using tools though. To use a tool you have to modify an object and then use it to modify something else. Like carving a spear tip and then killing a deer. Birds pick up stuff to build nests with all the time and they’re not using tools.

    @27: that was its mouth (beak). the octopus poos through its siphon.

  34. Great article! I can’t believe I didn’t read “Sexy Beast” when it came out a few months ago….now I’m really excited and creeped out by octopodes!

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