Why you might like to be in an octopus’s garden

IF YOU imagined octopuses as solitary creatures wafting through the waves, consorting with other octopuses only to mate or kill them, you’d be wrong — they might enjoy a better social life than you do.

Scientists have discovered a small octopus city, or Octlantis, built out of discarded clam shells strewn around rocks about 30ft below the surface off the coast of New South Wales, Australia.

The octopuses live in 13 separate burrows, bringing their prey home and peacefully co-existing,

according to a study in journal Marine And Fresh-water Behaviour And Psychology. But if a new octopus approaches, two sentinel octopuses expand to their full height and darken in colour to ward them off.