Is it true that the video shows an octopus walking on the beach?

For several years, social media users have been surprised by a video of an octopus crawling very quickly along a sandy beach. We checked whether this video is real.

Since 2020, you can find posts on social networks with videos that supposedly show how an octopus got out of the water and quickly moved along the sand along the shore. Typically, such entries are accompanied by signatures in the style of “Nothing unusual! Just an octopus walking on a sandy beach.” So, in the public “Contemplate” on VKontakte there is a video posted in April 2022, it collected 12,000 views and 340 likes. In 2020–2021, such a video was posted in other communities, including "Traveler - Travel and Tourism" (83,000 views, 1,000 likes), "Club of Connoisseurs" (18,000, 270), "Our Living Planet" (192,000, 1900), "Predator" (4800, 120), "Dangerous Planet vol. 2" (12 500, 210), Black Science (299,000, 3000) and #necro_tv (174,000, 1050). In addition, the video is posted on YouTube (examples here And here), on Twitter (here, here And here) and on other resources. For example, on the site Noodlemagazine This octopus video has 84,000 views and 1,000 likes.

In fact, the video was made using computer graphics. It was created by a Russian-speaking visual effects artist under the nickname ghost3dee (Alex Z), living in Qatar. The original video is posted back on August 2, 2020 on his Instagram* with the following caption: “Churro the octopus walks along the beach in his updated body with a dynamic model.” At the same time, under the post there are many tags that clearly indicate the presence of computer graphics and animation: #cgparticles, #animation, #cgcreature, #creatureanimation, #octanerender, #cgi_idea, etc.

In addition, if you look closely at the animal from the video, you will notice that it has not eight, but nine tentacles. Therefore, the author noted that technically it is not an octopus (octopus), but a nine-legged one (novempus).

A couple of months earlier, in June 2020, Alex Z posted "a short test render of Churro and his first attempts at climbing a steep wall." In the same post, the author indicated that he was working on creating a new body for this creature in the form of a real octopus, which he considers an incredible animal.

And at the end of August of the same year, the 3D artist also showed several videos with process creating a viral video and movement Churro from a different angle.

By the way, Alex Z knows that on the Internet his work is sometimes mistaken for a real video. For example, here's a funny one description clip from his account on the MakersPlace website: “The viral alien Novempus Churro, who squirmed on the beach in August 2020. It is still a controversial topic among Internet users and the source of numerous theories. Its origins remain to be determined in the future, but we do know that it was stranded on Earth after a spaceship crashed in the deserts of the Middle East." Perhaps the reason for user confusion is fast author on Twitter, where the video received a million views. The tweet contains only the following caption: “Churro the octopus walks along the beach of the Old Ruins in Qatar. Original video." There's a similar one on the artist's TikTok signature, but there are tags about computer graphics.

There are other videos with Churro's adventures on the author's pages. For example below shownas he showers and sheds his skin in a public park.

Although that viral video is not real, there are actually octopuses in nature that can move short distances on land. Most representatives of this order are benthic animals, some live in the water column, but there is a unique species called Abdopus aculeatus. In the BBC documentary series "The Hunt" these octopuses called the only ones capable of walking on the surface. The video below shows one of them hunting crabs on the northern coast of Australia. It says that at low tide, many octopuses find themselves in water traps - small reservoirs formed in rocky depressions. However, A. aculeatus can temporarily leave the water to move from one such body of water to another in search of prey. Although they do not move as fast as in the video with computer graphics.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: collage “Checked” / Stewart Cutler /Sony

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Snopes. Does This Video Show an Octopus Walking on the Beach?
2. Is it true that a huge eel was mistaken for the Loch Ness monster?