The octopus usually hunts alone, but footage captured by divers shows that it also works with fish. Octopuses take on the role of strategic leader.
Biologists from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, have collected 120 hours of video footage captured by divers in the Red Sea. They observed thirteen cases of group fishing between different species, where there was a large blue octopus (Blue octopus) worked with different species of fish to find and catch small fish and molluscs.
The different members of the hunting party seem to play their own role. So it was Parobinos nosea fish from the mullet family, tends to encourage fish of other species to explore new environments. The “lead” octopuses were able to “convince” the group to stop moving by staying in a certain place.
Octopuses sometimes even acted as strict leaders. When eating some fish, especially Alpine grouper (Appendicitis fascia), acted opportunistically by following the group without contributing to the hunt, and the octopuses then punished the fish by punching them with their tentacles. German biologists now want to check whether octopuses can recognize individual opportunistic fish.
