A beachgoer in Australia managed to film an astonishing battle between two ocean denizens, as an octopus ambushed an unsuspecting crab from a tide pool, dragging the unfortunate crustacean to its likely demise.
The unusual video was captured by Porsche Indrisie of Applecross, Australia, as she explored the tide pools at Yallingup. As the footage begins, the crab can be seen inching its way warily into a tide pool, as if sensing danger. Just seconds after Indrisie began shooting the video, an octopus propels itself out of the water with amazing speed, chasing after the crab as it attempts to flee to the safety of another nearby pool.
[Warning: Adult Language]
“There’s an octopus eating a crab!” Indrisie yells, astonished.
The octopus proves to be too quick for the crustacean, managing to entangle its prey before the crab can find its way into the imagined safety of the water. A struggle ensues as the octopus begins dragging the smaller crab back to the pool from which it erupted, handily overpowering its prey. Within moments, the octopus succeeds in dragging the crab back into the water and under a rock outcropping, disappearing from the camera’s view.
If any of you were planning on having a Crab dinner, well this Octopus beat you to it, Talking about Fresh! pic.twitter.com/zQfFmUHSv7
— Dennis Griffin (@DennisGriffin2) February 20, 2015
“I don’t know why I started filming it, but I always have a camera in front of my face,” Indrisie noted. “My sister and I were at a place called the aquarium in Yallingup and I saw this crab, so I stumbled across some rocks to film it. It was very random. When I first saw the octopus, I thought it was a black crab, it moved so fast. I was just so surprised the octopus could leap out of the water like that.”
Indrisie, who works as an assistant for Burswood Seafood, posted the video to her Facebook page, where it received so much interest that her friends convinced her to upload it to YouTube. At the time of this writing, the footage has been viewed over 320,000 times.
Once the crab was pulled under the rock by the octopus , Indrisie said that she knew the animal’s fate was sealed.
“We hung around for a while, but I understand octopus flip it open and eat it pretty quick, so I knew it was toast,” she said.
When asked which animal she imagined would prevail in a conflict, the crab or octopus , Indrisie said she never gave the matter any thought, referring to the video as a “random moment.”
[Image: Porsche Indrisie via Twitter/ Australizer ]