Octopuses Are Punching Fish to Create Hunting Groups

A specific group of Octopus cyaneas in the Red Sea were observed repeatedly punching fish. These particular octopuses were hunting with groups of fish and would punch the fish if they were not moving along and actively looking for prey.Its theorized the fish and octopuses chose to hunt together as the octopuses could reach into narrow crevices to root out prey, and the fish would help the octopuses find more prey in a shorter amount of time.

Despite the octopuses being the "enforcers" of the hunting group by punching, researchers did not believe they were leading the groups of fish in their hunts. It appeared that blue goatfish were the ones leading where the hunting group would search and finding prey first, while the the octopuses would keep the fish in line and moving together as a group. The data even showed that the octopuses were most likely to be punching blacktip groupers.

And yes, we use the plural octopuses. While octopi has been used often enough that it is understood to mean more than one octopus, technically octopus is a word of Greek origin, not Latin. Octopodes is the Greek pluralization and acceptable, but it's also totally fine to conjugate words in the style of the language that adopts them. So we say octopuses in English, similar to how platypus would be platypuses. Check out our previous videos on octopuses vs octopi if you still feel strongly about this topic.

Sampaio, E., Sridhar, V.H., Francisco, F.A. et al. Multidimensional social influence drives leadership and compositiondependent success in octopusfish hunting groups. Nat Ecol Evol (2024).