When octopuses go hunting for prey, they sometimes end up "dining" on members of their own species, and the cephalopods seem to have a taste for their victims' arm tips. In a new study, researchers described three cases of cannibalism in the common octopus — Octopus vulgaris — recorded with a camcorder by scuba divers in Ría de Vigo, Spain, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast. And, in one of the cases, the predator had access to more "traditional" prey in the form of mussels, but it still chose to feed on another, smaller octopus. The researchers documented the first of the three cannibalism cases on Dec. 11, 2012, at a depth of 40 feet (12 meters), on a rocky bottom off the Cíes Islands, which are part of the National Park of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia (NAPAIG).
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