Dozens of octopuses have been spotted crawling up New Quay beach in Wales in an exciting, yet bizarre evening spectacle for beachgoers.
Tour company SeaMor posted two videos of these daring octopuses to Facebook, but the question still remains -- why did they venture so far from the safety of their homes when octopuses need water to survive?
Sydney University Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith told the ABC that the eight-legged creatures wouldn't survive long on the beach and their adventure could be the result of confusion.
"This is purely speculative, but I would have guessed they are heading towards or away from a chemical," Professor Godfrey-Smith said.
"It's very unlikely to be suicide. One possibility is ... octopuses have short lives and when they grow old they decline and get very confused very quickly.
"I guess if there were a bunch of old, lost, confused octopuses that might be a possibility, but those numbers all at once — it's unlikely."
The rare event had many people both excited and concerned. With the encouragement of the SeaMor company, people headed down to the beach with hand-held lights and helped the octopuses back into the ocean.
SeaMor's Facebook post reads, "We collected the ones that were totally out of the water, and plopped them back in at the end of the pier, hopefully saving them from getting stranded."
Brett Stones from SeaMor told the BBC that seeing the octopuses on the sand was nothing short of amazing.
"It was a bit like an end-of-days scenario," he said.
"It is really rare to see them."