> So it’s not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than the coconut crab?
It is a lot more ridiculous though because land crabs are a well known thing (e.g. hermit crabs) whereas land octopuses don't exist. Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.
It just requires a little prior knowledge about the broad strokes of animalian orders.
To make things even more murky, some octopuses can actually breathe air out of water (which I knew prior to seeing the page), so I was actually semi-fooled by the article as well. An arboreal octopus is actually not that far-fetched.
>Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.
They're not though. Octopi generally don't like being out of water, but they're capable of traveling on land short distances and in fact the Abdopus Aculeatus octopus regularly goes on land by choice in order to hunt crabs in different tidepools. Sir David Attenborough discusses the octopus here, which this octopus was one of the animals featured in The Hunt documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebeNeQFUMa0
It is a lot more ridiculous though because land crabs are a well known thing (e.g. hermit crabs) whereas land octopuses don't exist. Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.
It just requires a little prior knowledge about the broad strokes of animalian orders.