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Hawaii: 6-year-old Narrowly Escapes Shark Attack, Says my Soul Left Body
A six-year-old girl was left devastated after having a close encounter with a blacktip shark. The incident took place in Hawaii’s Kalama Beach.
Representative Image: Florida Museum of Natural History
A six-year-old girl was left devastated after having a close encounter with a shark. The incident took place in Hawaii’s Kalama Beach where Anela Rezentes and her mother Shari Gouveia are a regular. However this weekend, Anela found an expected visitor while swimming in the shallow waters. Experts deem the marine creature to be a blacktip shark, a species known to hover near the coast in search of food.
There is no reason to think the video is anything but legitimate. The video was filmed in Dunsborough, Western Australia. This region is home to the Western Australian common octopus closely related to the common Sydney octopus but recently determined to be its own species. This species, as seen in the video, is “commonly found in and around inshore reef systems and sandy benthos” and it “completes its life cycle in nearshore and continental shelf waters.”
Speaking to The New York Times, Peter Ulric Tse, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College who studies octopus cognition, said that octopuses, in general, “can express what we would call aggression when they feel threatened or when they feel their territory is under threat.” Tse said that the behavior captured in Karlson’s video is likely a warning not an attempted attack.
Aggressive Cephalopods
(Photo : Pia) My initial reaction to the experience, which I was able to capture on video, was horror, accompanied by curiosity. I had never seen an octopus up close before, but I was more fascinated at the moment. Remember, I was with my daughter, and I m sure every father can relate to being more defensive of her than afraid of the danger, Karlson said.
The former lifeguard left the octopus behind and went to put up a shelter for his wife and daughter farther down the beach.
Karlson was floating in the sea on his own about 20 minutes later (having swum there many years before) when the octopus reappeared - he was whipped around his left arm when gazing at crab shells in water about 1.5 meters deep.
WATCH: Man slapped by angriest octopus in Australia Updated
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By now everyone knows that things in the land down under can get pretty crazy when it comes to anything animal-related.
From koalas causing trafficjams to fields covered in spiders, Australia has proven time and time again that it really has no chill.
The latest story making its way from the sunny coasts of western Aus involves a man, his daughter, and an angry octopus.
Although it sounds like the title of a children s book, the encounter is very much real and was even captured on video!
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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.
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.
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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.