Land-Walking Cephalopods

Joined
Mar 29, 2018
Messages
10
Location
Washington State U.S.
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? :lol:
 
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.
 
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:
1695187148061.png
 
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:
1695187148061.png
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.
 
Hey @lochroma, long time no see! NHK has the BEST ceph content :popcorn:

I don't think we've ever seen one in a home tank in our forums (and where would they walk to? :-/ Here's a cool paper that D had found on them:

 
The show is now airing. I watched it on the cable channel NHK World. It does not seem they are streaming it at the website.

It dates from 2022, and does briefly feature a Japanese cephalopod researcher, Sumire Kawashima. Her work is summarized here:
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Sumire-Kawashima-2160754609

If you are going to watch the program brace yourself for corny puns. Ugh. And there is a silly animated character one can ignore.

There are many of good scenes of hunting behavior, and one of predation. The way the O. oliveri walks is impressive; that they get up off the ground and even jump is incredible. Nothing like the oozing movement that we usually see when octopus traverse land. I wonder if the species demonstrates the same behavior in Hawaii and New Zealand.

I think I will nominate the common name “the walking octopus” for this species.
 
NOW, it is available on the website above.
I should have mentioned that another cephalopod reseacher appears in the show: Ikeda Yuzuru
Other notes I made:
They have small eggs in strings.
The video shows multiple animals fighting over a crab.
They take very large crabs for the size of the octopus.
Question:
The stated size is 30cm. It this correct? It seems all the mature octopus in this video are a lot smaller than that.
 

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