The octopuses have built an “artificial reef” through their shell-collecting behaviors, and this seems to have led to an unusual social life developing, a life of high densities and continual interaction. One way to interpret our Octopolis observations is to think that they show that octopuses, of this species and perhaps others, are generally more social than people realize. Their signaling behaviors—the color changes, the displays—do suggest this. A growing number of other studies push in the same direction: they suggest that octopuses are more engaged with each other than had once been
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