Fact Check: Optical illusion? Viral video of the octopus is not what it seems to be

A video of an adorable octopus walking on the tips of its tentacles over a seabed is being widely shared on social media.

The video is being shared with a caption: “Octopus walking on the seabed!”

Octopuses are an amazing spice. They are known for their unimaginable intelligence. They are famous for their soft and round bodies, bulging eyes, and eight long tentacles with suction cups. They are often considered “monsters of the deep” as well. But mostly they are one of the fantastic ocean creatures we have seen.

However, it is not a big deal if you see an octopus crawling or waving that majestic octopus’s blanket but walking on toe tips. That’s a little skeptical. Let’s find out the veracity of the viral video.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false.

We noticed that the viral post on X has a BBC note and a YouTube link tagged along the viral tweet.

On carefully watching the BBC video titled ‘How many brains does an octopus have? | Spy in the Ocean’ dated 5th June 2023, we found that the walking octopus seen is actually a spy camera programmed to walk and look like an octopus to analyze How the octopus' 9 brains work and to find out how clever it really is.

The description of the BBC documentary reads, 'How many brains does an octopus have? | Spy in the Ocean’.

The viral clip can be seen at the time stamp of 0.33 seconds in the YouTube video.

We further found an article on Laughing squid along with the same video by BBC titled 'Robotic octopus helps octopus hide from predators' dated 9 June 2023.

“A robotic spy octopus by John Downer Productions provided cover for a real coconut octopus who was looking for shelter to hide from predators in a heartwarming clip from the David Tennant-narrated BBC/PBS series Spy in the Wild,” said the article.

A similar report was found on a Chinese media outlet South China Morning Post as well, appreciating BBC for such phenomenal footage.