Although commonly thought to be one of man's feared deep-sea enemies, the octopus is generally a harmless animal that rarely bothers man. In fact, most types of this powerful, eight-armed creature are afraid of people. There have been some cases in which octopuses have attacked divers. But even these scattered attacks have not been very serious. In the mid-nineteenth century, Victor Hugo is said to have started the idea that the octopus is a vicious monster of the deep. In his Toilers of the Sea, he described how this devilfish eats a human being. The tale became so popular that other novelists, and later the movies, used episodes which depict a man struggling in the arms of this marine monster. And thus, the misconception of the octopus as a vicious, merciless killer was spread.

Q. Underline the sentence which suggests that writers borrow ideas from each other.