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Octopuses punch fishes. YES. OCTOPUSES. PUNCH. FISHES!!
Our new paper is out on @ESAEcology, showing that octos express this behavior during collaborative hunting with other fishes. This was probably the most fun I had writing a paper. Ever! (small
)
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3266
Our new paper is out on @ESAEcology, showing that octos express this behavior during collaborative hunting with other fishes. This was probably the most fun I had writing a paper. Ever! (small
)https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3266
Octopuses and fishes are known to hunt together, taking advantage of the other's morphology and hunting strategy. Since multiple partners join, this creates a complex network where investment and pay-off can be unbalanced, giving rise to partner control mechanisms. @SimonGingins
We found different contexts where these punches (or directed explosive arm movements, if you want to get technical about it) occur, including situations where immediate benefits are attainable, but most interestingly in other contexts where they are not!
After this naturalistic description, to disentangle between potential ecological/game theory scenarios underpinning this behavior's expression, and measure features of collective behavior in multi-species groups, we're now running quantitative analyses on "the gang"! 
Courtesy of the @maxplanckpress the paper is freely available, and as a bonus all supplemental videos are too, check it out! #octofish https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3266
I should also thank all the funders that made these fieldwork seasons possible @AnimBehSociety
@InsideNatGeo
@NatGeoExplorers
@PADI
@MalacSoc
@InsideNatGeo
@NatGeoExplorers
@PADI
@MalacSoc
