Octopuses are extremely talented: They have been seen building forts, playing games, and even walking on dry land. But one area where the cephalopods are coming up short is in the social sector. At least that’s what marine biologists would believe. Now a recently discovered underwater community called Octlantis is inspiring scientists to call their character octopuses like loners.
As Quartz reports, the so-called octopus city is located in Jervis Bay off the east coast of Australia. The area of the seabed is surrounded by as many as 15 greasy octopuses, aka common Sydney octopuses (octopus tetricus). Looking at the creatures in the past, scientists thought they were completely lonely, not to mention their annual courtship rituals. But in Octlantis, octopuses communicate by changing colors, banishing each other from gods, and living side by side. In addition to interacting with their neighbors, the grim octopuses have helped build the city’s own infrastructure. In addition to the rocks they call home, they have stored heaps of scallops and scallops and shaped them into shelters.
There is one other gloomy octopus community that is similar to this one, and it may help scientists understand how and why they shape. The original site, called Octopolis, was discovered in the same bay in 2009. Unlike Octlantis, Octopolis was centered around a human object that sank to the seabed and provided caves for up to 16 octopuses at a time. The researchers who investigated it had accepted that it was a freak incident. But this new city, built around a natural habitat, shows that gloomy octopuses in the region could be becoming more social.
If so, it is not clear why such cities are so uncommon. “Compared to the typical lonely life, the costs and benefits of living in collections and investing in interactions remain to be documented,” the researchers who found the group wrote in a paper published in Marine and Freshwater Behavior and Psychology [PDF].
It is also possible for the first time in history that humans have the facilities to see small octopus villages that were probably never under the surface of the sea.
[h/t Quartz]