Diver Notices an Octopus Decorating Its Home With Shells — Then They Realized Why

Deep within the ocean, some self-taught home decorators and interior designers build sustainable fortresses for themselves and their families. Nestling in deep-sea trenches, hidden crevices, and rocky outcrops, these decorators, a.k.a. octopuses, comb the entire ocean to collect shiny objects and use them to adorn their homes. Veronica (@sowinski_), a diver from Florida, was stunned to find the seafloor punctuated with dens decorated with an assortment of shells, shiny stones, and glittery ornaments. She snapped the scene in a footage which has been viewed millions of times ever since.

“I love learning new things about the ocean every time I dive, like the fact that octopus decorate their homes with ‘shells’ to make a ‘garden’,” she wrote in the video’s overlay caption. The video starts with the camera zooming into the seafloor blanketed with silt and sediment. Marked at one point within the sediment is a small den. The den is bordered with a patchwork of colorful shells, pebbles, and stones. The camera then pans to another location, traversing through the shadowy underwater zone, and then halts at a place where the bed of sediment is overlaid with clumps of underwater bushes, corals, and cementy mounds.

A den nestling among these bushes and rocks appears to be decorated with glinting shells, misshapen rocks, and jagged objects, some of them arranged randomly and some arranged in an almost Jenga-like pattern. In the same way as humans like to add character to their homes with décor, this decoration appears to add an almost mystical character to the homes of these eight-legged creatures. These shell gardens, Veronica explained in the caption, have “a few purposes: to camouflage their homes, it helps keep the structure of their home, and some people theorize it could be a way to truly decorate/impress mates. It could be remnants of their meals, or it could be a way to mark their territory!”

In the comments section, viewers started a discussion pondering whether these octopuses will accept a shell or decoration if a human offers them. “They do! This is a very effective way to befriend an octopus,” said @taurellian. @rawpsyc commented, “That entrance is majestic.” @sophie.monki said, “That one was a landscape architect.” The footage reminded many of them of a 1968 episode from The Beatles when Ringo Starr was in Sardinia. The musician had temporarily withdrawn from the recording sessions and was wandering through caves and oceans to explore, just when a boat captain told him this fascinating behavior about octopus decorating their homes with shells and shiny objects to build “gardens.”

As it turns out, it isn’t just an idle hobby or a pastime, but actually a ritual rooted in the science of their survival. According to Animals Around The Globe, octopuses engage in this decoration ritual for many reasons - from protecting their abodes against predators to marking their territory and attracting suitable mates. The behavior is most commonly observed in “coconut octopuses” as well as the Australian gloomy octopuses. Some captive octopuses in aquariums were found to be reorganizing their tanks overnight.

You can follow Veronica (@sowinski_) on Instagram to catch more glimpses of her ocean adventures.

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