Humanity's tenuous position atop the evolutionary ladder has been threatened once again as the existence of a tool-using octopus has been confirmed by Australian scientists. Amphioctopus marginatus, the veined octopus, was filmed by Julian Finn and Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne, as it picked out two halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptied them, and assembled them into a spherical home. Though it's not the first time octopodes have used foreign objects as places of residence, the veined octopus's homebuilding is remarkable due to the extensive preparation, transportation, and fabrication involved. For Finn and Norman, this counts as tool use, and would make it first documented case of such behavior in invertebrates.
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