Video: Octopus Uses Coconut Shell as Portable Home
Here is a video of an octopus using a coconut shell for protection. The discovery by Julian Finn, a marine biologist at the Museum Victoria in Australia, of a clever veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) using a coconut shell as a mobile home is being cited as the first reported instance of an invertebrate acquiring tools. Take a look:
This video by Brian Wysor shows an octopus cleverly camouflaging itself amongst seaweed at Wild Cane Bay in Bocas del Toro. During part of the video the octopus even mimics the movement of the seeweed in the water. Take a look:
Every octopus romance resembles a Shakespearean tragedy. A new study has found that octopuses have a complex love life that includes courtship, hand holding, jealousy and even murder.
The study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who journeyed off the coast of Indonesia found that wild octopuses are far from the shy, unromantic loners their captive brethren appear to be.
The scientists watched the Abdopus aculeatus octopus, which are the size of an orange, for several weeks and published their findings recently in the journal Marine Biology.
They witnessed picky, macho males carefully select a mate, then guard their newly domesticated digs so jealously they would occasionally use their 8-to-10-inch tentacles to strangle a romantic rival.
The researchers also observed smaller "sneaker" male octopuses put on feminine airs, such as swimming girlishly near the bottom and keeping their male brown stripes hidden in order to win unsuspecting conquests.
Octopuses can stiffen their limbs to create "trick elbows" or temporary joints. These pseudo joints function in a similar way to human joints. An article on MSNBC.com explains:
Researchers recorded muscle activity in octopus limbs, and found that an arm generates two waves of muscle contractions that propagate toward each other. When the waves collide, they form a part-time joint.
This process occurs three times, forming a shoulder where the arm meets the body, a wrist where the suckers have grasped their food, and an "elbow" somewhere in between. The elbow typically exhibits the most movement during food retrieval.
The researchers say this is a remarkably simple and apparently optimal mechanism for adjusting the length of arm segments according to where the food item is grasped along the arm.
The similarity of structural features and control strategies between jointed vertebrate arms and flexible octopus limbs suggests that these configurations evolved separately in octopuses and vertebrates, a result scientists call an example of convergent evolution.
This isn't the first time we have seen an Octopus doing something extraordinary. Last July we learned that a young octopus could open the lid of a tightly closed jar in less than ten seconds.
Octopuses can stiffen their limbs to create "trick elbows" or temporary joints. These pseudo joints function in a similar way to human joints. An 
