Octopus Crawls Out of Water and Walks on Land

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Updated September 19, 2018

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The tentacles of an octopus are impressive in their fluidity, but there's even more going on in that appendage that's just under the skin. Olga Visavi/Shutterstock

This amazing video of an octopus literally crawling out of the water and walking across dry land was captured at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in California. But it turns out that this behavior is not as uncommon as you might expect. Captive octopuses actually escape with alarming frequency. While on the lam, they have been discovered in teapots and even on bookshelves.

"Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor — and then run for it. Yes, run. You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat," Middlebury College researcher Alexa Warburton says. "It's so weird!"

That said, capturing the escape on film is quite rare. Mainly because studies on octopuses are so limited due to the creatures’ typical shyness and their brief lifespan of about three years.

Octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton, according to the journal Science. However, these findings all took place underwater.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if other octopus species also walk,” said Science writer Christine Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley.

It seems like they do!