By Tim Binnall
A wild video from the Philippines shows a fisherman forced to fight off a tenacious octopus that had latched onto his face. The jaw-dropping incident reportedly occurred on July 10th as Jesser Cervantes was out on the water near Puerto Princesa Island. The fishing trip took a strange turn when he snagged an octopus, which then sprang onto him. While the eight-armed devilfish initially gripped only the back of his head and neck, making the moment seem more annoying than dangerous, things quickly became worrisome when the octopus covered Cervantes' mouth with its tentacles.
The power of the cephalopod's limbs was on full display as the increasingly desperate fisherman struggled to free himself from the creature so he could breathe. Perhaps realizing that time was of the essence, Cervantes snatched a piece of bamboo stem and pried the octopus off of his face in an arduous process that took several seconds. Commendable, rather than killing the creature after becoming free from its grasp, the fisherman simply released it back into the water, where it undoubtedly had quite the story for its fellow denizens of the deep. For his part, Cervantes later marveled at the animal's tremendous stretch, which made the brief but harrowing moment particularly frightening.