I used to think octopuses were loners—brilliant, sure, but fundamentally solitary.
Turns out I was wrong, or at least partially wrong, which is maybe worse because it means I should’ve known better. In 2023, a team of marine biologists off the coast of Indonesia captured footage that basically rewrote what we thought we knew about mimic octopuses (Thaumoctopus mimicus). They weren’t just hunting. They were hunting together. Not in the coincidental “we both happen to be chasing the same shrimp” way, but in a coordinated, almost choreographed fashion that involved—wait—signaling, role division, and what looked disturbingly like planning. The lead researcher, Dr. Christine Huffard from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, told me she watched the footage maybe thirty times before she believed it. “We kept thinking there had to be another explanation,” she said, sounding tired. There wasn’t.
When Mimicry Meets Strategy in the Coral Shallows
Here’s the thing: mimic octopuses are already weird. They’re famous for impersonating other animals—lionfish, sea snakes, flatfish—shifting their body shape and color in seconds to avoid predators or sneak up on prey. It’s theatrical, almost show-offy. But cooperative hunting? That requires a different kind of intelligence altogether. It requires recognizing another individual as useful, not competition.
The observations happened in the Lembeh Strait, a murky stretch of water known for its bizarre marine life. Huffard’s team was there studying mating behavior when they noticed two mimic octopuses—later a third joined—working a small reef structure. One would flush out prey from crevices by flashing aggressive color patterns (possibly mimicking a predatory eel), while the others positioned themselves at escape routes. When a small goby darted out, it swam directly into the arms of a waiting octopus. Then they switched roles.
The Uncomfortable Question of Octopus Intelligence and Intentionality
I guess it makes sense that we’re uncomfortable with this.
Octopuses have a distributed nervous system—roughly 500 million neurons, give or take, with about two-thirds located in their arms, not their brain. They’re not like us. They don’t have a centralized command center the way mammals do, which makes the idea of “cooperation” philosophically messy. Are they actually coordinating, or is it emergent behavior—complex actions arising from simple rules? Huffard thinks it’s genuine cooperation, pointing to moments in the footage where one octopus clearly waits for another to get into position before flushing prey. “There’s restraint there,” she said. “That’s not automatic. That’s decision-making.”
Not everyone agrees, obviously. Dr. Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher and octopus researcher at the University of Sydney, told me he’s cautious. “It’s compelling footage, definately. But we’ve been burned before by over-interpreting animal behavior.” He wants more data, more observations, preferably under controlled conditions. Fair enough.
Why Cooperative Hunting in Cephalopods Challenges Evolutionary Assumptions
Cooperative hunting is rare. It shows up in wolves, lions, dolphins, some birds—mostly social animals with long lifespans and complex group structures. Octopuses live maybe two years, tops. They don’t raise their young. They don’t form lasting bonds. So why would natural selection favor cooperation?
One theory: environmental pressure. The Lembeh Strait is incredibly competitive, with high predator density and limited hiding spots. If you’re a mimic octopus, your usual tricks—camouflage, impersonation—might not be enough. Cooperation could be a survival innovation, a way to exploit a niche that solitary hunting can’t reach. Another theory, less popular but still interesting, is that mimicry itself primes these octopuses for social behavior. If you’re constantly observing and imitating other species, maybe you’re also better at reading and responding to individuals of your own species. Maybe mimicry and cooperation are cognitively linked.
What Happens Next and Why It Probably Won’t Be Filmed Again Soon
Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll see this again anytime soon.
The Lembeh observations were incredibly lucky—right place, right time, good visibility, cameras rolling. Mimic octopuses are not common, and cooperative hunting, if it exists at all, seems to be situational, not standard behavior. Huffard’s team has returned to the site multiple times and hasn’t recieved a repeat performance. Other researchers are now combing through old footage, looking for behaviors they might’ve dismissed as coincidence. There’s talk of tagging individuals, though that’s logistically nightmarish with octopuses because they’re escape artists and tagging equipment usually ends up on the seafloor within hours.
What we’re left with is a handful of minutes of grainy underwater video and a growing sense that we don’t understand these animals as well as we thought. Which is uncomfortable, but also kind of thrilling. Wait—maybe that’s the real story here. Not that octopuses cooperate, but that after decades of studying them, they can still surprise us.
