Octopuses are not well-known for their ability to jump out of the water to catch their prey. But this video shot by Porsche Indrisie in Yallingup, Western Australia seems to put pay to that.
She captures the scene of an octopus in full flight leaping onto a crab, wrestling with it on the rocks and eventually pulling it under water.
The Guardian says that this is the first time that this behavior has ever been captured on video.
The paper also quotes Indrisie as saying,
” I didn’t know why I chose to film this crab, but thought I would try and get closer to it but something else beat me to it.” The video has attracted more than 7 million views on YouTube.
In the video, the octopus is clearly more than ready for a scrap on the rocks with the crustacean critter. It’s certainly a tenacious fighter. What the outcome of the brawl under water is, can’t be seen, so we’re left wondering if tentacles beat claws.
An octopus does have a hard beak, but when it captures its prey it first injects it with paralyzing saliva. After poisoning a crab, it then breaks it up into small edible pieces.
Indrisie, who aptly works as a seafood assistant, is quoted by the Independent as saying,
“We hung around for a while, but I understand octopus flip it open and eat it pretty quick, so I knew it was toast.”
It seems that “Jumping- Jack- Flash- the octopus” isn’t so rare and octopuses frequently like to make a land grab, or in this instance, a land crab.
