An octopus was filmed carrying two halves of a coconut shell across the seafloor to reassemble them later as a portable suit of armour, one of the only clear cases of a wild invertebrate using tools.

An octopus was filmed carrying two halves of a coconut shell across the seafloor to reassemble them later as a portable suit of armour, one of the only clear cases of a wild invertebrate using tools.

A team of Australian marine biologists were diving off the coast of northern Sulawesi, Indonesia, on a research trip to study a completely different species of octopus, when one of them saw something he could not explain. A small octopus on the seafloor was busy manipulating two halves of a discarded coconut shell. The researcher assumed the animal was going to hide inside one of them. Which would have been ordinary. Octopuses hide inside things…