The octopus is an amazing animal and under a good deal of scientific scrutiny. Recently a possible example of octopus teamwork has emerged as researchers believe the cephalopods team up with fish to hunt.
According to an article on ChipChick on MSN the discovery was made in the Red Sea and researchers believe that the eight legged creatures use fish to help them find prey. They also apparently shoo away fish that will not participate in the hunt.
Evidently the fish can find potential prey hiding in areas they can’t reach and they can signal the octopus which can reach the prey. According to Smithsonian magazine:
“With the octopus leading the charge, fish scout for hidden prey and signal where to capture a smaller fish or mollusk. But if freeloading fish are hovering around, looking to benefit from the hunt without contributing, the octopus punches them away, according to new research.
“The octopus basically works as the decider of the group,” Eduardo Sampaio, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and lead author of the study, told Nature News’ Helena Kudiabor.
The study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, brought a new type of collective behavior to light. Octopuses, often thought of as solitary creatures, led a group of various species of fish and discerned which ones were and weren’t helping.”
The octopus is a far more complex animal than has been thought. There is evidence that they have an active dream state, which surprises neurologists.
Every 60 minutes or so, the animals underwent rapid changes of skin colour lasting about one minute, together with changes in breathing rate, as well as body and eye movements.
When the team tapped on the tanks and watched how the animals responded, they found the octopuses showed different reactions depending on whether they were awake, in the quiet stage of sleep, or in the active stage.”
Nature can be reached here.
It is still impossible to know exactly what is going on. There are other explanations, such as fine-tuning their coloration. But the parallels with human sleep are interesting. As with the researchers who thought octopus dreams may be night mares, the researchers feel no certain answers have been found.
In the previous research an octopus showed behavior that could be consistent coming out of a bad dream.
