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Whether it’s mimicking venomous creatures, or shooting jets of water at aquarium light switches to turn them off, octopuses are nothing if not resourceful. Now, an analysis of underwater images suggests octopuses are increasingly using discarded bottles, cans, and other human rubbish as shelter or as a sanctuary for their eggs. The study – the first to systematically evaluate and characterise litter use by octopuses using crowdsourced images – analysed hundreds of underwater photos posted on social media platforms and image databases, or collected by marine biologists and diving interest groups. The research, published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, documented 24...

Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active" sleep that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution. During their active periods of sleep, octopuses' skin color changes and their bodies twitch, according to a report in the journal iScience, and they might even have short dreams. "If they are dreaming, they are dreaming for up to a minute," says Sidarta Ribeiro, a neuroscientist at the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. It's been clear for awhile that octopuses can change color...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A giant male octopus caught on cell phone video scaling his glass display tank at the Seattle Aquarium and reaching several tentacles over its open top has sparked Internet speculation that the massive mollusk was trying to mount an escape bid. But aquarium officials say the octopus, named Ink, was not attempting a jailbreak in the video, which has gone viral on the Internet, but simply learning to embrace his new home with all eight arms. "It was not an escape attempt," aquarium spokesman Tim Kuniholm said of the video, in which Ink inched his way...

SAN FRANCISCO - Marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex. The new 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...