Amazing Video of Octopus Showing Off for Spectators on Land

It is not everyday you see marine life voluntarily exit their aquatic habitat and venture onto dry land, but when they do it's stunning to see how they react.

Check out this footage some lucky zoogoer (actually a "marine reserve" goer) was able to capture (Note: Hold out for 2:17 when it spits out a crab -- he's such a show off):

My favorite line of the whole clip? "Joey, are you watching this!?" I find the spectator commentary almost as interesting as the bulbous octo that finds its way back to water again at the end.

Yahoo, which blogged the about the video, points out though that octopi hopping out of water and roaming on land isn't as uncommon as we may think. It quotes a feature in Orion Magazine about recent research about octopus intelligence and how they react on land:

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 said. "It's so weird!"

Octopuses in captivity actually escape their watery enclosures with alarming frequency. While on the move, they have been discovered on carpets, along bookshelves, in a teapot, and inside the aquarium tanks of other fish—upon whom they have usually been dining.

And they're not the only aquatic creature that has the ability to move amazingly well outside of its element. Earlier this week, we wrote a story about researchers evaluating how fish did outside of water. You'll be surprised at how far they can fling themselves into the air in hopes of finding water again.