Hide and seek: A veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus peeps out of a coconut shell it has collected
Aussie scientists find coconut-carrying octopus
By
Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press Writer
37 mins ago SYDNEY – Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.
The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot.
Julian Finn and Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne observed the odd activity in four of the creatures during a series of dive trips to North Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia between 1998 and 2008. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.
"I was gobsmacked," said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. "I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh."
Octopuses often use foreign objects as shelter. But the scientists found the veined octopus going a step further by preparing the shells, carrying them long distances and reassembling them as shelter elsewhere.
That's an example of tool use, which has never been recorded in invertebrates before, Finn said.
"What makes it different from a hermit crab is this octopus collects shells for later use, so when it's transporting it, it's not getting any protection from it," Finn said. "It's that collecting it to use it later that is unusual."
The researchers think the creatures probably once used shells in the same way. But once humans began cutting coconuts in half and discarding the shells into the ocean, the octopuses discovered an even better kind of shelter, Finn said.
The findings are significant, in that they reveal just how capable the creatures are of complex behavior, said Simon Robson, associate professor of tropical biology at James Cook University in Townsville.
"Octopuses have always stood out as appearing to be particularly intelligent invertebrates," Robson said. "They have a fairly well-developed sense of vision and they have a fairly intelligent brain. So I think it shows the behavioral capabilities that these organisms have."
There is always debate in the scientific community about how to define tool use in the animal kingdom, Robson said. The Australian researchers defined a tool as an object carried or maintained for future use. But other scientists could define it differently, which means it's difficult to say for certain whether this is the first evidence of such behavior in invertebrates, Robson said.
Still, the findings are interesting, he said.
"It's another example where we can think about how similar humans are to the rest of the world," Robson said. "We are just a continuum of the entire planet."
Article: HERE
Sea legs: A veined octopus crawls along the ocean floor holding one half of a coconut shell. Scientists filmed the creatures displaying the unusually sophisticated behavior
The amazing octopuses that make their own mobile homes... from coconut shells
15th December 2009
These incredible pictures show octopuses making their own mobile homes from discarded coconut shells - in what scientists believe is the first 'intelligent' use of tools by an invertebrate. Researchers studied more than 20 of the eight-legged creatures in Indonesia, watching how they recycled the shell halves thrown into the sea by humans. The animals did much more than simply crawl under a convenient shell. They collected coconut halves of the right size, stacked two together, and transported them under their bodies over distances of up to 20 metres.
The shell 'bowls' were then unloaded and placed with their open ends together to form a closeable lair. To carry the shells, the octopuses developed a comical form of locomotion, dubbed 'stilt walking' by the researchers. The soft-bodied creature would first spread itself over a consignment of coconut shells, making its eight tentacles rigid. It would then raise the whole assembly to amble on eight 'stilts' across the sea floor.
This made what the octopuses were doing very different from the actions of hermit crabs, which house themselves in empty mollusc shells, the scientists pointed out. 'There is a fundamental difference between picking up a nearby object and putting it over your head as protection versus collecting, arranging, transporting (awkwardly), and assembling portable armour as required,' said Dr Mark Norman, from the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Colleague Julia Finn, who also took part in the research, added: 'While I have observed and videoed octopuses hiding in shells many times, I never expected to find an octopus that stacks multiple coconut shells and jogs across the sea floor carrying them.
Sophisticated: The octopuses were seen performing elaborate routines to pick up and transport their shells. Their 'intelligent' use of the shells is very different to the actions of creatures such as hermit crabs
'I could tell that the octopus, busy manipulating coconut shells, was up to something, but I never expected it would pick up the stacked shells and run away. It was an extremely comical sight - I have never laughed so hard underwater.' The research is reported in the journal Current Biology.
'Ultimately, the collection and use of objects by animals is likely to form a continuum stretching from insects to primates, with the definition of tools providing a perpetual opportunity for debate,' the scientists wrote. 'However, the discovery of this octopus tiptoeing across the sea floor with its prized coconut shells suggests that even marine invertebrates engage in behaviours that we once thought the preserve of humans.'
Article:
HERE
Did you know?
What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
English words of Latin or Greek origin have rather unpredictable plurals, and each one usually depends on how well established that particular word is. It may also depend on whether the Latin or Greek form of the plural is either easily recognizable or pleasant to the speaker of English.
Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes.
Other words ending in -us show a very varied pattern. Like octopi, the plural hippopotami is now generally taken to be either funny or absurdly pedantic, and the usual plural is hippopotamuses. Common usage appears to indicate a slight preference for termini rather than terminuses, but syllabuses rather than syllabi. Other usual forms include cacti and gladioli, and our files at the dictionary department show scarcely any examples of nucleuses or funguses. (Omnibi is simply a joke, and quite ungrammatical in Latin!)
Among words ending in -um it seems worth drawing attention to the word curricula, plural of curriculum, and warning against confusion with the adjective curricular (as in extra-curricular).
HERE
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