Originally published at: Watch an octopus punch noncompliant fishes - Boing Boing
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Had a Biology prof declare (without proof) in a freshman class “The ability to rise to evolutionary dominance depends on liberating limbs from mundane tasks such as locomotion.” …obvious anthrocentricism aside, it does provide a high five to the octopus tentacle (and elephants’ trunk)
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So octopodes are dicks?
Can’t say I’m mad surprised!
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Maybe, but I think that dolphins, for example, are generally considered to be higher up in the evolutionary chain than crabs or sea stars.
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Read the article yesterday and it’s pretty interesting how the hunting roles naturally arise. Octopus seems to fall as the general problem solver/decision maker/taskmaster, fish suited to hunting will take on scouting roles, and ambush fish take on the role as the brawlers when the octopus pulls prey out from a hiding spot. There may be additional dynamics but i think this is rad, plus an octopus punching fish into action is just… so damn funny.
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Um, it’s, uh, non-hierarchical.
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Watching an octopus punch a fish is fine, but how (and why) does the organised hunting come about? How do the fish know? How does the octopus organise it?
(Yeah, I’m going to have to read the full article later.)
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From my recollection i don’t think the article tackles an answer for that. But it does say that as far as the octopus goes its likely a learned behavior as older octopus are the ones involved in this, and younger ones don’t or if they do they seem to struggle. So it’s probably a combination of incidental interactions with other fish where various parties happened to be in the same place and benefitted from ganging up on prey, and slowly learned to cooperate 
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I’m just going to go ahead and say it (again):
octopodes are cool!
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but, i always say that.
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Evolutionary dominance goes to beetles by species count or (among animals) to crustaceans by weight and numbers. You’d need to come up with some other measure that focuses on one weird mammal before you could try to prove anything about it.
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Slavery and violence are learned.
The animal kingdom is inherently violent from the day predation evolved into place. Cooperative cross species hunting is something else.
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Seems to be a common trait to the more “intelligent” species.
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That was certainly true for a time, at more than 21 million sold. But by the 1990s the total number of Corollas sold eventually outnumbered the Beetles.
What were we talking about again?
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I think it was something about the Beatles
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Some viruses predate on bacteria. Epiphyte plants predate on other plants. It looks like a general part of life (if you count viruses as being alive.)
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I assumed that my use of Animal Kingdom was not broad enough (I was at work and didn’t have the mental bandwidth to reword it), i had some of these similar acts of predation in mind too but happy to see this brought up 
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Saw a nature show with footage of a big reef fish - maybe a grouper? - who invited a moray eel to go hunting with them. The eel flushed out the prey from narrow hiding places, the fish killed it, and they shared the rewards.
Another show I saw explained that young occapuses don’t normally learn from their elders, but it was starting to happen I think near the island of Capri! Older occapuses began showing the young 'uns how to deal with many things, often with marvelous results. A young 'un had learned from their elders an amazing method of dealing with an eel. An eel was threatening a group of occapuses, and one of the smol ones threw themselves at its head, and firmly wrapped her/his tentacles around the eel’s face, clamping shut its scary mouth!
When the occapus finally let go, the eel fled at damn near light speed.
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And they have bowling leagues.
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