National Post Staff 2021-04-05
Most people who have watched the Netflix documentary ‘My Octopus Teacher’, would assume that octopuses are playful, curious creatures with an appetite for affection and human companionship.
© Provided by National Post An angry octopus heads towards Lane Karlson before lashing out in a video that has since been viewed over 300,000 times.
But a viral video of an encounter between an Australian geologist and an aggressive octopus proves that the intelligent marine creatures are not to be messed with.
Lance Karlson, who filmed and posted the footage, called it the ‘angriest octopus on Geographe Bay’, Western Australia, in his caption.The clip, which has been viewed more than 300,000 times on Instagram, shows an octopus swimming toward the camera in shallow water, eyes narrowed. In a blink of an eye, it whips out its tentacles before spreading them out back in the water.
He doesn’t know what he did to anger the octopus so much, he told CNN .
“I was confused — it was more of a shock than a fright,” he said.
Karlson met the octopus on March 18 while taking a walk on the beach with his two-year-old daughter in search of a spot to swim.
He noticed something attacking a seagull — a stingray, he presumed. But as he drew closer with his daughter, he realized it was an octopus and took out his phone to film it, just in time for the octopus to turn its wrath on him.
But a viral video of an encounter between an Australian geologist and an aggressive octopus proves that the intelligent marine creatures are not to be messed with.
Lance Karlson, who filmed and posted the footage, called it the ‘angriest octopus on Geographe Bay’, Western Australia, in his caption.The clip, which has been viewed more than 300,000 times on Instagram, shows an octopus swimming toward the camera in shallow water, eyes narrowed. In a blink of an eye, it whips out its tentacles before spreading them out back in the water.
He doesn’t know what he did to anger the octopus so much, he told CNN .
“I was confused — it was more of a shock than a fright,” he said.
Karlson met the octopus on March 18 while taking a walk on the beach with his two-year-old daughter in search of a spot to swim.
He noticed something attacking a seagull — a stingray, he presumed. But as he drew closer with his daughter, he realized it was an octopus and took out his phone to film it, just in time for the octopus to turn its wrath on him.
https://www.instagram.com/lancekarlson/?utm_source=ig_embed
“I took that footage, it lashed out at me and I was quite surprised; and then it swam off into deeper water,” Karlson told CNN.
That wasn’t the end of his encounter with the invertebrate. Later, as he swam among a nearby ‘crab graveyard’, examining some crab shells, he felt another whip across his arm, followed a second on his neck and upper back.
The water around him, he said, turned murky with what looked like octopus ink, as he stumbled back to the safety of the shore. He believes he may have inadvertently come across its home and threatened the octopus.
Octopuses are known to squirt an ink-like dark pigment as a defence mechanism when they feel threatened. For the most part, octopus ink is harmless to humans but the lashes of their tentacles leave a stinging pain treatable with an acidic substance.
Karlson, a former lifeguard, said he normally treats the stings with vinegar. However, finding none in his hotel room, his family instead poured some Coca-Cola over him, which dissipated the pain.
“The pain went away and more than anything since then, it’s been more the physical hit that was painful… The imprint on my neck in those photos is more from the physical hit, and I guess it makes complete sense when you look at the video I took 20 minutes earlier of that lashing out,” he said.
The lashing marked Karlson’s first encounter with the cephalopod and motivated him to watch the popular Netflix documentary to learn more about the creatures.
“They are beautiful creatures and I really hope this provokes more interest in octopuses as opposed to fear of them. I think this is a fascinating creature with clearly some very strong emotions just like we do as humans,” he added.
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