Incredible Octopus Crawls Out of Water, Drags Itself Across Dry Land [VIDEO]

A family recently visiting the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, Calif. caught an incredible video of an octopus crawling out of water and onto land. It seems the octopus would stop at nothing to catch its dinner, even some seaside crawling.

The video is especially unique because octopuses are notoriously shy with humans, other creatures and even members of its own species.

However, it seems the sea creatures are no strangers to crawling around on land. According to researcher Sy Montgomery, Octopuses in captivity actually escape their watery enclosures with alarming frequency. While on the move, they have been discovered on carpets, along bookshelves, in a teapot, and inside the aquarium tanks of other fish-upon whom they have usually been dining.

Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor-and then run for it. Yes, run, he continues.

You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat, Alexa Warburton, a researcher at Middlebury College, told Montgomery. It's so weird!

Octopuses are complex sea creatures and notoriously difficult to understand. Although they are only invertebrates, octopuses are infinitely more complicated than clams and other mollusks. Recent studies have indicated that octopuses have intelligence, emotions and indivdual personalities.

A particularly strange aspect of octopuses are their eight long arms. The suckers or suction-cup like part of their tentacles have the ability to both taste and feel by touching an object. While humans have 100 billion neurons in their brain, a sign of high level of intelligence, octopuses only have 130 million neurons in their walnut-sized brain. However, three-fifths of an octopuses total neurons are not in their brain, but rather can be found in their arms.

In fact, Montgomery explains, in an insightful article on the intellect of the creatures, that each octopus tentacle is like a mind of its own. If an arm is cut off, the octopus will not only regrow the arm, but the cut off arm can move on its own. In one study, an arm was cut off and proceeded to find a food item and feed it to the mouth of the octopus just as if it were still connected to the body.

Check out the video of the octopus crawling on land: