Cephalopod experts at UC Berkeley have discovered that the larger Pacific striped octopus—seen here outstretched—employs a rare hunting strategy. Instead of pouncing on its prey with all eight arms (a common technique among octopuses), it extends a single limb, like a grabby toddler, and startles its prey into clutches.
Below, you can watch the octopus work its magic, to the tune of some unaccountably sexy music:
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said marine biologist Roy Caldwell, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of integrative biology. “Octopuses typically pounce on their prey or poke around in holes until they find something. When this octopus sees a shrimp at a distance, it compresses itself and creeps up, extends an arm up and over the shrimp, touches it on the far side and either catches it or scares it into its other arms.”
That’s not the only thing unusual about the larger Pacific striped octopus: its mating habits are also, reportedly, mind-blowing.
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