Octopuses and fish hunt as a team, study finds

When you think of an octopus, you might picture it swimming alone underwater, however scientists think the animals could be more social than we imagine!

A new study has found that octopuses sometimes team up with groups of fish in order to hunt together.

It's thought the arrangement helps both creatures - with the fish finding the prey, before calling on the octopus to capture it.

Experts suggest that this joint effort leads to better success compared to either species acting alone.

What did scientists discover about octopi and fish?

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany tracked both species during scuba diving expeditions in the Red Sea, which lies between Africa and Asia.

They saw 13 hunting groups made up of one octopus (called a day octopus) and different species of fish, including gold-saddle goatfish and blacktip groupers.

It's not the first time experts have observed octopuses and fish hunting together, however researchers had previously thought that fish simply follow the octopus in order to catch any prey an octopus might miss.

But this new study revealed that when hunting prey together, some octopus and fish species appear to share leadership - depending on the different types of decisions that need to be made.

For example, goatfish specialised in deciding where the hunting groups move - while the octopus decided whether and when the move would be made.

However, it's not always easy hunting together.

Both sea creatures sometimes fall out with each other - fish move others out the way by swimming towards them quickly, and octopuses hit some fish to the outer areas of the group!

Experts say the findings help better our understanding of the shared social life of the underwater animals.