One-Minute Facts: Octopus Slaps

Watch out fishies, they’ve got eight ways to punch you at once

Photo by COPPERTIST WU on Unsplash

We know that octopuses are extremely intelligent creatures. However, they do some ultra-advanced sneakymcbeaky stuff that might surprise you.

For example, some octopuses use their arms to slap or punch fish.

This most often happens when they hunt — they sometimes form a team thingy with some fish. The fish find and flush out the food; the octopus then goes in for the kill. Very efficient as long as everyone sticks to their jobs.

I don’t know how bright fish are but they sometimes screw up. If they mess up too badly, the octopus might well give them a big old slap or punch them out of the way.

Some people also think that an octopus plays slap-the-fish when it’s bored. It whacks out at an innocent passing-by fish just for giggles. I’m not sure this is true but it’s so funny I’m going to believe it anyway.

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