See you later, suckers

SYDNEY - Our closest relatives in the animal world, chimpanzees and orangutans, have long been known to use tools. But octopuses?

Australian scientists diving off Indonesia were astonished to see four octopuses collecting coconut shells from the sea floor and transporting them for future shelter and protection. They said yesterday that it was the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate.

While hermit crabs carry shells to protect their soft bodies, the veined octopuses, or Amphioctopus marginatus, go one step further.

They not only gather the coconut shells and stack them like bowls, but then carry them long distances, assembling them into armour when predators approach.

It is this planning for the future that makes their behaviour so sophisticated, according to Mark Norman, from Museum Victoria in Melbourne.

"It comes at a cost, carrying these shells in this awkward way, and it's a fantastic example of complex behaviours in what we consider the lower life forms," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

He and a colleague, Julian Finn, spent more than 500 hours filming and observing the octopuses off Bali and North Sulawesi.

The pair, whose findings have been published in the scientific journal Current Biology, watched them digging out the coconut shells and emptying them with jets of water.

Finn, a research biologist, said: "I was gobsmacked. I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh."