Hi!
My name is Erik, I found this community while googling for squid pics as inspiration for a novel I'm writing. I read some of the threads and felt right at home, so I decided to join. My girlfriend, bless her heart, keeps yawning and cursing at my enthusiastic ranting about molluscs, so I figured here I could be myself and leave her alone
Now, for my question. A year ago I went to Australia, and snorkelling at a fairly remote beach in sothern NSW I saw something strange. A large octupus, roughly one meter in lenght, was hiding out in a crack in the rocky sea floor. Two of its tentacles were visible, and as I came closer it grabbed two abalone shells lying right outside the burrow. The Oc held them up next to each other and seemed to point them at me.
This looked very much like a pair of huge, gleaming eyes staring right at me, quite creepy actually. Figuring this out must require quite a brain, which is really impressive. Could an octopus really be that clever, or was it merely using the two flat, hard objects as shields?? Have anybody seen or heard of such behaviour before?
Thanks a lot and cheers! Erik
My name is Erik, I found this community while googling for squid pics as inspiration for a novel I'm writing. I read some of the threads and felt right at home, so I decided to join. My girlfriend, bless her heart, keeps yawning and cursing at my enthusiastic ranting about molluscs, so I figured here I could be myself and leave her alone
Now, for my question. A year ago I went to Australia, and snorkelling at a fairly remote beach in sothern NSW I saw something strange. A large octupus, roughly one meter in lenght, was hiding out in a crack in the rocky sea floor. Two of its tentacles were visible, and as I came closer it grabbed two abalone shells lying right outside the burrow. The Oc held them up next to each other and seemed to point them at me.
This looked very much like a pair of huge, gleaming eyes staring right at me, quite creepy actually. Figuring this out must require quite a brain, which is really impressive. Could an octopus really be that clever, or was it merely using the two flat, hard objects as shields?? Have anybody seen or heard of such behaviour before?
Thanks a lot and cheers! Erik