Overview

• Researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory and Florida Atlantic University report the findings in Scientific Reports after analyzing extensive field videos.
• Divers recorded 25 wild octopuses across six natural sites in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Spain, then scored movements frame by frame from footage gathered between 2007 and 2015.
• The team documented 12 distinct movement types and mapped actions across three arm sections, with elongation and shortening concentrated near the base and bending frequent at the tip.
• Any arm could perform the full repertoire of actions, with a roughly 60–40 front-to-back usage bias, no left–right preference, and front arms more often used for exploration while back arms aided movement.
• Each arm bears roughly 100 chemo-tactile suckers that provide rich local feedback, and the observational dataset offers design cues for flexible manipulators in confined environments.