---
title: Coconut Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus)
scientific_name: Amphioctopus marginatus
common_name: Coconut Octopus
taxon: Cephalopods
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-03T22:37:40.145Z
updated: 2026-08-11T19:10:24.511Z
tags: Coconut Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, Cephalopods, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/cephalopods/coconut-octopus
---

# Coconut Octopus (*Amphioctopus marginatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cephalopods (*Cephalopoda*)
- **Size:** 15 cm
- **Depth:** 3-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Open sand and silt, sheltered bays
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric, Semelparous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dark branching veins over the mantle and a bright yellow siphon
- carries shell halves or a coconut shell under its arms
- walks on two arms with the body held clear, a stiff stilting gait
- about 15 cm including arms, always on bare sand or silt

A small octopus, about 15 cm (6 in) including arms, sandy brown with dark branching veins across the mantle and a bright yellow siphon. It lives on open sand and silt where there is nothing to hide in, which is the problem its behavior solves.

It carries a shelter with it. This octopus collects coconut half-shells, and where those are absent, bivalve shells or bottles, cleans them out with jets of water, and stacks them one inside the other. It then walks across the sand on two arms with the load held under the others - a stiff, comic gait known as stilt-walking - and when threatened, pulls the halves shut around itself like a clam.

That is genuine tool use, and it was the first case recorded in an invertebrate. The distinction matters: carrying an object that is useless while it is being carried, at a real cost in speed and exposure, purely for a benefit that comes later, is exactly what separates a tool from an opportunistic shelter. The 2009 paper describing it forced a rewrite of what cognitive scientists thought a mollusc could plan.

The rest is standard for the genus: crabs and bivalves for food, a clutch of very small eggs guarded by the female, and death shortly after they hatch. On a night dive on silty sand, a coconut shell that moves is the whole show.

## Also known as

- **English:** Sand Bird Octopus, Coconut Octopus, Veined Octopus
- **Arabic:** أخطبوط جوز الهند, أخطبوط طير الرمل, أخطبوط معرق
- **Hebrew:** תמנון הווריד
- **French:** Pieuvre noix de coco, Poulpe des sables, Pieuvre veinée
- **Italian:** Polpo del cocco
- **German:** Kokosnuss-Krake
- **Spanish:** Pulpo reticulado, Pulpo venoso
- **Turkish:** Hindistancevizi Ahtapotu
- **Portuguese:** Polvo do coco, Polvo venoso
- **Dutch:** Geaderde octopus, Kokosnootoctopus
- **Czech:** Chobotnice žilkovaná
- **Japanese:** メジロダコ
- **Chinese:** Tiáo-Wén-Xiāo, 條紋章魚, 條紋蛸
- **TH:** ปลาหมึกสายดำ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Octopus marginatus* Taki, 1964
- *Octopus striolatus* Z.-Z. Dong, 1976

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/cephalopods/coconut-octopus)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*