Scientists Discover Two Underwater Cities Built By Octopuses

Scientists Have Discovered Two Underwater Cities Built By Octopuses

Scientists have now found octopuses appearing to manipulate their environment in a more permanent way than using tools.

Jervis Bay in Eastern Australia, is home to two communities of Gloomy Octopus, which have been called Octopolis and Octlantis.

Here the octopuses have been observed to live in constructed burrows and dens. They use things such as shells to create their abodes, and have even been observed to evict each other from their dens.

 

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Professor David Scheel led research into the octopus communities and said: “These behaviours are the product of natural selection, and may be remarkably similar to vertebrate complex social behaviour.”

Not only that but the underwater octopus cities didn’t have any human elements at their heart, meaning that the octopuses constructed them themselves.

Report co-author Stephanie Chancellor observed that the octopus’ works ‘were further sculpted to create dens, making these octopuses true environmental engineers’.

What the octopus communities also offer is the opportunity for scientists to observe how the extraordinary creatures interact with one another. Marine biologists have observed them to communicate, and even evict one another from choice dens in the artificial reef they have created.