Octopuses are using human garbage as shelter, camouflage and more, study finds Social Sharing
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Loading... - Adelaide Schneider
- 11 Mar 2022
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A new study suggests it's becoming increasingly common for octopuses to use bottles, cans and other human trash to shelter themselves, camouflage their dens and even house their young.
"We believe this is because of the high abundance of these artificial items — you know, the litter item — in the ocean," senior author Maira Proietti, an oceanographer from the Federal University of Rio Grande in Brazil, told As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay.
"It's becoming so common that they're using these items to protect themselves with instead of their natural shelters, such as seashells, which are becoming scarce in the ocean."
The findings are not surprising. Marine scientists and other people who work on the ocean have long observed octopuses taking up residence in sunken bottles and containers. In fact, those who study the creatures often use such objects to lure and capture them.
But the new study, published in last month's Marine Pollution Bulletin, is the first to use crowdsourced photography to examine just how widespread the behaviour is.
Hundreds of crowdsourced photographs
The researchers — from the Federal Universities of Rio Grande, Santa Catarina and Pernambuco in Brazil and the University of Napoli in Italy — examined 261 photographs of 24 different species of octopuses interacting with ocean trash from around the world. Read More...
