Octopus punches fish in the head while out on a hunt together

Forget everything you thought you knew about octopuses, they’re actually violent little terrors who run their own aquatic fiefdoms.

Footage shows them bossing fish around and even punching them in the head when they don’t feel their work is good enough.

The dominant octopus can be seen uncurling one of its arms to knock its pal on the head to move it out of the way.

It was initially believed the creatures were solitary animals that only make inter-species hunting trips.

A research team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany looked into octopuses behaviour, filming the expeditions in the Red Sea off the coast of Israel.

They found goldfish, gold-saddle goatfish and blacktip groupers took on different roles.

Goatfish decided where the group patrolled to find prey, while the octopuses decided when it was time to attack.

The team observed the punches were likely to push the fish to the edges of the group, or kick them out entirely.

While the fish pushed each other, none of them nudged into the octopuses.

‘It turns out that the punching is directed to fish that try to exploit the octopus and the group, particularly the blacktip grouper species,’ lead researcher Dr Eduardo Sampaio told BBC Science Focus.

‘Moreover, we found that punching is also associated with the group’s movement.

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‘That is, if the group is too clustered around the octopus and doesn’t move through the habitat, the octopus punches fish in order to show this negative feedback.

‘When the group is moving, the octopus doesn’t punch the fish, as there are prey opportunities being created for all members of the group.’

Other types of mixed-species hunting include badger-coyote, mixed birds, and moray eel-grouper groups.

However, the study’s authors said these groups are less flexible using social information to change strategy when compared to octopus-fish hunting packs.

Writing in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, the authors say: ‘These findings expand our current understanding of what leadership is and what sociality is.’

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