I have spent many an idle day swimming around a reef, playing with an Octopus like a puppy.
They are delightful, inquisitive, smart creatures who seem to really enjoy engaging with these huge ungainly creatures from the land that occasionally stop by. I made acquaintance with one octopus on my local reef by introducing it to gold goins - they can't seem to resist shiny gold things, and indeed in this case, I gave the coin to the octopus and it swam off to its hidden midden (which I was able to find after a while), where it had also collected bottles-caps and lost fishing tackle.
Another time, I watched a smaller octopus playfully baiting whitefish by dangling an empty crayfish husk out of its hole .. just idly floating it in the current until a dumb whitefish came along for a nibble, and then BAM out came another tentacle from the hole, and the world was less one dumb whitefish.
They are delightful, inquisitive, smart creatures who seem to really enjoy engaging with these huge ungainly creatures from the land that occasionally stop by. I made acquaintance with one octopus on my local reef by introducing it to gold goins - they can't seem to resist shiny gold things, and indeed in this case, I gave the coin to the octopus and it swam off to its hidden midden (which I was able to find after a while), where it had also collected bottles-caps and lost fishing tackle.
Another time, I watched a smaller octopus playfully baiting whitefish by dangling an empty crayfish husk out of its hole .. just idly floating it in the current until a dumb whitefish came along for a nibble, and then BAM out came another tentacle from the hole, and the world was less one dumb whitefish.