Octopuses Can Hide Pretty Much Anywhere

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In general, there are very few sea creatures that pose a threat to humans while we’re stood on dry land. Even the mighty great white shark would find itself slowly drowning in delicious shark killing air, its last view of the world being a set of testicles being slowly lowered onto its face. Then you have octopuses, sea creatures who can not only survive on land, but thrive on it given the right conditions. 

Before we get to that though, let’s address the story above because as unbelievable as it sounds, it’s 100%, an octopus caught just off the English channel really did once escape, make its way below deck and then hide inside of a teapot for several hours. Exactly what happened to the octopus or how much shit it left inside the teapot isn’t known, but it is recorded that it was able to successfully evade capture for several hours before the English crew inevitably needed to drink some tea and found it. Still alive, waiting for its chance.

Like all sea creatures, octopuses will eventually die if they stay on dry land too long, however, unlike many sea creatures they don’t completely flip their shit when dragged out of the water, instead observing their surrounding and acting accordingly. For example, here’s an octopus being haphazardly hurled onto a boat deck with all the finesse and care you’d give to a half eaten burrito being dunked into the garbage and responding by nonchalantly changing fucking color.

"AHHHHHHH"
“AHHHHHHH”

Did you see that? If you’re not currently fucking terrified of octopuses, imagine what that GIF would look like if that fisherman had thrown the octopus at someone’s face. We understand if you want to take a short break to stop screaming, but before you do, we have some more octopus facts that are going to make you consider throwing a note of surrender and possibly a healthy snack into the ocean.

You see octopuses are smart and we don’t mean “slap a button to get a treat” smart, we mean “randomly escaping from their tanks to steal things” smart, which is scientifically as smart as we think an animal can be before we have to start making them pay taxes.

Or at least get jobs.
Or at least get jobs.

In captivity octopuses have been known to escape specially made tanks – usually by observing how they’re closed and opened – to do things like eat fish in other tanks, steal things they think look interesting and in some cases, wander around knocking shit over like a drunk toddler with adhesive snakes for arms. In one case a scientist in the UK was woken up at nearly 3AM to find an octopus slithering down his stairs and in another a private collector was devastated to find their prized octopus on their lawn being eaten by ants after it escaped its tank. What was the octopus doing on the lawn? Making a break for the ocean which was only a few hundred feet away.

Due to a combination of their intelligence which has been described as being superior to that of a child or Trump supporter, flexible, boneless bodies which can fit through almost any space and multiple spider-like limbs, there’s little that can stop a determined octopus save for a shotgun blast or sternly worded note on its tank. What’s more, they’re also apparently capable of holding grudges against people they don’t like, the most startling example of which is arguably Truman, an octopus who spent months harassing a college volunteer by spraying her and only her with water every time she walked past his tank. The student got so sick of the abuse that she eventually just quit, presumably after writing “fuck you” backwards on Truman’s tank.

So the next time you feel like there might be someone, or something in your room with you late at night, there’s a very real possibility its a member of the octopus recon force sent to search out humanities weakness and slap us 8 times across the face while we sleep.