Land-Walking Cephalopods

[TheSquidLord56]

So I'm guessing most of us know octopuses can crawl out of water and crawl from time to time. I just found an awesome video demonstrating this behavior from Australia:

My question/thought experiment is this: Could this evolve into an amphibious cephalopod? I'm sure you guys have heard the jokes about cephalopods taking over the world, and maybe this could be the start of it?

 

[DWhatley]

Their land explorations are very awkward and would not serve well to avoid being prey. They have evolved to lose their shells and would have to reverse the process to become more adept at spending any time on land.

 

[Maggie]

I agree SquidLord, awesome vid! I love all the squishy squashy noises

 

[tonmo]

maybe this could be the start of it?

One can hope!

 

[Wolfgang_Slany]

Octopus oliveri seem to live and hunt mainly on land. There was a Japanese documentary from the NHK (national TV station) last year about their surprising life style on the remote Ogasawara archipelago. They also live on Hawaii and as far as New Zealand. Here's a picture from the documentary:

 

[Wolfgang_Slany]

Octopus oliveri seem to live and hunt mainly on land. There was a Japanese documentary from the NHK (national TV station) last year about their surprising life style on the remote Ogasawara archipelago. They also live on Hawaii and as far as New Zealand. Here's a picture from the documentary:

I forgot to say: the video from which above photo was taken was filmed outside of the sea, on the shore. The octopus has no problem to "walk" quickly on the rocks, like seen in the photo, with the main body completely lifted up from the rocks. It can also jump when hunting crabs, and even uses the surf to hunt crabs when the crabs can't see it due to the spume. Living on the rocks on the remote Ogasawara islands, they have close to no predators on land but ample food. In the water, many fish would hunt them so it is safer fro them to live on land. Awesome adaptation. The Japanese government is taking great care not to introduce any non-local species.