We don’t want you to think that we are fixated by octopuses here at Cosmos (although we do think they are pretty cool), but soon after our post on the creature’s strength and camouflage skills, another video has emerged, taken by Porsche Indrisie, of an octopus leaping from its rock pool home to capture a crab in Yallingup, western Australia.
It got us wondering though, how an animal as soft as an octopus can eat something as sharp and well-defended as a crab. It turns out that the truth is rather gruesome – the octopus injects the crab with a toxin that liquefies its tissue allowing it to be sucked out, as the video below from the Discovery Channel via howstuffworks.com explains.
Originally published by Cosmos as More adventures of the awesome octopus
Bill Condie
Bill Condie is a science journalist based in Adelaide, Australia.
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