A rare sighting, captured on video off the coast of New Zealand and shared by scientists affiliated with the University of Auckland, shows a Maori octopus riding on top of a mako shark, Fox News reported.
The university said the December 2023 encounter "was one of the strangest things University of Auckland marine scientists had ever seen. It was a mysterious sight indeed... octopus are mostly on the seabed while short-fin mako sharks don’t [favor] the deep."
The university researchers had been looking for shark feeding frenzies in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island when a mako shark with an "orange patch" on its head was discovered, the report said.
The researchers launched a drone and put a GoPro camera in the water and "saw something unforgettable: an octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles," University of Auckland Professor Rochelle Constantine wrote in a piece for the university last week.
Constantine added that the researchers moved on after 10 minutes, so they weren’t sure what happened to the "sharktopus" next, but the "octopus may have been in for quite the experience, since the world’s fastest shark species can reach [30 mph]."
