Sometimes walking in a straight line without tripping over with just two feet is enough of a challenge . So imagine the kind of coordination it would require if you had eight legs . Now scientists have unraveled how octopuses manage to keep track of all of their flailing limbs as they crawl over objects . The video above , recorded by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , shows how that despite its body orientation ( green arrow ) the octopus can crawl in any direction ( blue arrow ) thanks to its flexible arms . Using high speed videos of octopuses as they negotiated obstacles , biologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel studied the cephlopods movement . They found that the orientation of the creature 's body and the crawling direction are controlled independently in the brain . Male octopuses have a long , detachable penis in order to mate with females that are five times bigger than itself . When a female swims by , the male Argonaut sends his penis off to swim to the female and mate with her . In fact , the penis is a ball of sperm in a tentacle called a hectocotylus and females can be fertilised by more than one , by storing them in the mantle cavity . The male dies soon after his unique ordeal , whereas the female can mate several times and even store multiple hectocotyli in a special cavity until they ’ re needed . In the past , scientists that caught female specimens confused the attached penises for parasitic worms . The male mollusc won almost a third of votes in a survey set up by the Society of Biology to identify the strangest animal sex . The thrust comes from arms that push by elongation rather than arms that pull . This combined with they symmetrical arrangement of the arms around the body helps to give the marine creatures their extraordinary maneuverability . It is the first time scientists have been able to fully understand how octopuses are able to control their movements without a rigid skeleton . The findings may help scientists develop new ways for soft robots to move around and can also shed some light on how octopuses evolved in the first place . Professor Binyamin Hochner , who led the research , said : 'Octopuses use unique locomotion strategies that are different from those found in other animals . 'This is most likely due to their soft molluscan body that led to the evolution of 'strange ' morphology , enabling efficient locomotion control without a rigid skeleton . ' Octopuses are thought to have evolved from clam-like creatures in the mollusc family . But as they lost their hard protective shell , they seem to have evolved to move far faster than other members of the mollusc family like slugs or snails . The octopus was found to move by pushing with its legs rather than pulling while it could move in any direction regardless of the position of its body - something that humans find extremely difficult to do without falling over . Dr Guy Levy , a neurobiologist who also took part in the research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , said : 'During evolution , octopuses lost their heavy protective shells and became more maneuverable on the one hand , but also more vulnerable on the other hand . 'Their locomotory abilities evolved to be much faster than those of typical molluscs , probably to compensate for the lack of shell . ' The researchers , whose work is published in the journal Current Biology , found that despite their large number of arms , octopuses do not move them in any rhythmical pattern like insects and millipedes do , for example . Speaking to the BBC , Dr Levy said the findings could help develop robots that can squeeze into difficult to reach spaces . He said : 'People want to build soft robots for medical purposes and rescue operations . '
Biologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel used high speed videos of octopuses crawling over objects to study how the animals move . Rather than pulling themselves along they use their legs to push instead . They can move in five direction while their bodies face a different direction . The findings could help scientists develop new types of rescue robots .