Female Octopuses Throw Things At Harassing Males, Study Finds

What do female octopuses do if they're the target of harassment from the males? It turns out, they throw stuff at them.

Researchers first observed octopuses throwing things like shells and silt at other octopuses back in 2015. At the time, however, it wasn't quite clear whether this was intentional or not, Phys.org reported.

"Very few animals have been reported to throw things at one another, so it would be significant if the octopuses are doing it," study co-author, Peter Godfrey-Smith, said in 2015.

To get to the bottom of this behavior, the research team went back to the same site in Australia's Jervis Bay and made recordings of the creatures. After analyzing the footage, the researchers determined that the behavior is actually deliberate. To do it, the octopuses hold the object under their bodies, angle their siphons and then shoot a jet of water at the object to propel them.

But apart from throwing things to move them out of the way or perhaps to discard remains from their meals, the researchers also observed the females throwing objects at males, often at the ones that were trying to mate with them.

"Some throws appear to be targeted on other individuals and play a social role, as suggested by several kinds of evidence," the researchers wrote in their study, posted in the bioRxib preprint server. "Such throws were significantly more vigorous and more often used silt, rather than shells or algae, and high vigor throws were significantly more often accompanied by uniform or dark body patterns."

In fact, in 2016, they even observed one particular female that threw silt at a male 10 times. The material hit the male on five out of the 10 instances.

"That sequence was one of the ones that convinced me [it was intentional]," Godfrey-Smith said.

"Throws targeted at other individuals in the same population, as these appear to be, are the least common form of nonhuman throwing," the researchers wrote.

The findings are also interesting as they show yet another interesting way that creatures avoid getting harassed by other members of their species. Only recently, for instance, a team of researchers found that some female white-necked jacobin hummingbirds don the bright plumage of the males so they won't get harassed and, in turn, get to eat more.