The beaked and eight-tentacled monsters with which we enjoy a tenuously shared existence on this Earth are no longer content to sit placidly in their tanks and their oceans. Cephalopods the world over are rising up and out of the water, from Australia to the Pacific Northwest, and no land-dweller is safe.

Fed up with a life of bondage and servitude, an octopus at the Seattle Aquarium began scaling the walls of its enclosure on February 26, inch by concave inch. Just days before, an octopine creature on the other side of the planet made a similar leap of faith, springing onto dry land and dragging a crab to its watery death.

This harrowing document of the Seattle incident was uploaded to LiveLeak yesterday:

That this particular octopus was thwarted on its path to freedom hardly matters. Witness the terror with which the assembled witnesses reacted to its muscular appendages probing the air—feel that very same terror yourself as you sit safely behind a computer screen—and ask yourself: What would have happened if the octopus had gotten get out? What will happen when another sea monster somewhere views this recording and is moved to put down its own suction-cupped foot?

The revolution is on, and there's no stopping it now.


h/t Death and Taxes. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.