Octopuses can move quickly in any direction, regardless of which way the eyes and body are facing.

Credit: Guy Levy and Benny Hochner, HUJI/Cell Press

Binyamin Hochner of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his colleagues studied the animal's movement by analysing videos of crawling octopuses (Octopus vulgaris; pictured). They found that the radially symmetrical octopus moves by extending and shortening its arms, and that it tends to crawl diagonally relative to its line of sight.

The octopus also seems to lack any rhythmic pattern when coordinating the movement of its arms, unlike most other animals. The authors suggest that octopuses make last-minute decisions about which arm to move to determine their direction of crawling.

Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/3vd (2015)