indonesia.

Scientists in Australia discovered an Indonesian octopus that builds shelters from discarded coconut shells, the Associated Press reported. The veined octopus selects choice coconut halves, cleans them out, and carries them as far as 65 feet across the seafloor. Then the octopus climbs inside one shell and pulls another over its head, forming its own private pod. Octopuses already have a history of crafty behavior. They can eerily mimic other sea creatures, like flounders and coral, to avoid being eaten by predators. They have been known to unscrew jars of food using their rubbery legs. Captive octopuses even appear to play with toys tossed into their tanks, as a Slate.com article reported ...

"Let's make beautiful music together." Photo: axinar/Flickr They may not take requests, but orangutans play musical instruments. In fact, they're the only non-human animals to do so, and new research explains why they do it. The hairy apes strip leaves from trees, fold them, hold them to their mouths and make a "kiss-squeak" sound, primatologist Madeleine Hardus told Paw Nation. Hardus, a researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, studied wild orangutans in Indonesian Borneo and observed their music-making first-hand. "To our knowledge, orangutans are the only non-human primates to manipulate sound with tools," she said. As far as wind instruments go, the folded ...