A team led by Eduardo Sampaio, of the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre in Lisbon, found that the cephalopods would punch fish while they were working together to find food, The Times reports.

While the octopuses were looking for prey among rocks, fish such as yellow-saddle goatfish and smooth cornet would perform other tasks.

But in videos of these situations in the Red Sea near Israel and Egypt, researchers found that octopuses would engage in violence against their “fish partner”.

Multiple octopuses were seen a number of times administering “a swift, explosive motion with one arm directed at a specific fish partner, which we refer to as punching”, the report said.

Mr Sampaio, whose research was published in the journal Ecology, thought the punches, while sometimes being given to prevent the fish from getting the choicest prey, also had delayed benefits, such as keeping bad fish in line.

Alternatively, octopuses may simply be bullies who enjoy hitting fish – on which view the “benefits are disregarded entirely by the octopus, and punching is a spiteful behaviour, used to impose a cost on the fish regardless of self-cost”.