Fish Punching

Fish punching doesn't always seem to occur for immediately practical reasons. On two occasions, researchers observed punching take place even when the sudden strike didn't appear to be related to pre-securing attempts. The researchers say in these cases, two different theoretical scenarios are possible. In the first one, benefits are disregarded entirely by the octopus and punching is a spiteful behaviour used to impose a cost on the fish. In the other theoretical scenario, punching may be a form of aggression with delayed benefits, i.e. where the octopus pays a small cost to impose a heavier one on misbehaving partner.