Contrary to their reputation, octopuses are indeed a social bunch. That’s what researchers realized after watching over 52 hours of film of the shallow-water Octopus tetricus in Jervis Bay, Australia. They saw footage of octopuses communicating with each other using body postures and by changing colours.
For example when an octopus with a dark body colouring approached a pale coloured octopus, the pale octopus retreated. However when a dark coloured octopus approached another dark coloured octopus, the two were more likely to grapple with each other.
Original research paper published in Current Biology on January 21, 2015.
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