A video that shows octopuses punching fish, taken by researcher Eduardo Sampaio, has gone viral. Naturalist Sy Montgomery joined Boston Public Radio on Wednesday to talk about about why these creatures do that.
"The octopus takes his arm and balls it up into a fist, like our fist, and punches a grouper," Montgomery said. "But if you look at it, you don't realize the circumstances that have brought them together — he's not just randomly punching at somebody, he is hunting with that fish."
Octopuses will sometimes choose to hunt with a number of different species of fish, Montgomery noted.
"They do it together because an octopus can do stuff that the grouper can't, and vice versa," she said. "And in this instance, it looks like the octopus is possibly irritated because his partner just screwed up, or it's a hunting partnership in which one partner cheats. Possibly the grouper may be about to eat the prey, so the octopus wants to punch him away and steal [it]."
Montgomery is a journalist, naturalist and a BPR contributor. Her latest book is " Condor Comeback."
