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Sea levels likely to rise 25cm this century
March 17, 2005
Huffard first saw a coconut octopus running on two legs during a field trip in 2000 but only recently was able to capture the phenomenon on film. A paper on the subject was published last week in the journal Science.
When walking, these octopuses use their back arms like tank treads: A line of suckers is planted on the ground, and the octopus pulls itself forward.
Huffard clocked one coconut octopus traveling at approximately 2.5 feet per second and another moving at 5.5 feet per second going backward. That is slower than the animals can get through the water but faster than they can crawl.
Running, though, enables the octopuses to get away from a predator while remaining camouflaged, or at least not look like a typical fleeing octopus, according to Huffard and Full, who is a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley.
"This bipedal behavior allows them to get away and remain cryptic," Huffard said in a prepared statement. "This is the first underwater bipedal locomotion I know of."
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"Viruses" is also an acceptable plural form of the word virus.
"Virii" is not in any of my dictionaries.
I guess a journalism degree is worth something after all. Assuming the author holds such a degree. Perhaps they just did well in 6th grade spelling class. :P
interesting, and nice to finally observer firsthand with video as
evidence, but where's the tech in it? I found this article on
slashdot, where it is more inline with what they report on, which
happens to be everything!