Have you ever seen an octopus on land? Well, a woman was filming a crab at an Australian beach when an octopus jumped out of the water in order to catch a crab.
Although octopuses are marine animals that do not make them less efficient on land as well. They are fearsome predators with a variety of natural weapons at their disposal.
Porsche Indrisie the woman taking the video said she was taking a video of the crab strolling among the rocks on a Yallingup, Western Australia, beach. When a tide pool octopus sprang out of the water and latched onto the crab.
After it catches the crab, the octopus immediately disappears underneath a rock.
While most octopi are bottom-dwellers that feed on crustaceans, polychaete worms, scallops, and clams. Sometimes they will target shallow tidal areas in search of unsuspecting prey. This was a typical shallow-water octopus and they are carnivorous in nature. Crabs are a favorite of octopuses. Some species like mussels too.
“Crawling along out of water is not uncommon for species of octopus that live in the intertidal or near shore,” states Julian Finn. A senior curator of marine invertebrates at the Museum Victoria in Australia, to Scientific American.
Many sea residents may come to the shore with the tides like shellfish and snails. But for an octopus, it has to be moist in order to survive on the land. This allows their body gas exchange and they can spend a short amount of time on the land.
This is not common behavior for an octopus to be on land but this octopus surprised even octopus scientists.
