When a man who goes by Poussin Diver explored the bottom of the ocean in Lembeh, Indonesia, he saw something strange and amazing. The footage, shot in April 2015, shows the small octopus carrying two halves of a coconut in its “arms” and using its other tentacles like legs to walk along the ocean floor.

Weird, right? What would an octopus want with two empty halves of a coconut shell? As it turns out, something absolutely brilliant and unexpected!

If you watch the video, you’ll see the octopus crawling along the ocean floor, holding the coconut behind it as it goes along. Even though it’s a little confusing, it’s so cool to watch this octopus do its thing — honestly, it walks surprisingly fast even with only half its tentacles moving it along.

Then, after it covered some ground, the octopus seems to have found the perfect spot. What happens next is almost instantaneous: the octopus places the coconut down underneath its body and pulls itself into the empty shells. Somehow (and, honestly, we’re not sure HOW exactly) the octopus begins closing the shells around its body!

What a brilliant defensive tactic! We knew that octopuses were extremely intelligent creatures, but this is so much more genius than we expected.

The species of octopus is called Amphioctopus marginatus, but they’re best know as the “coconut octopus” because of its habit of using coconuts and shells to protect itself.

“I’ve also seen some jump out the sand with their coconut and hide in them before the let the stream take them away,” The diver said after his filmed encounter went viral.

So, not only is this a means of hiding from predators, but these coconut octopuses even use these shells to move around the ocean. It’s so cool that this species uses their environment to protect themselves and that its something that’s essentially written in their DNA

Have you ever seen anything like this? Had you heard of “coconut octopuses” before? Make sure to share your thoughts with us!

Video Credit: Newsflare/Poussin