Our friends at the New England Aquarium pointed us to these nifty shots of their giant Pacific octopus squeezing itself into a small acrylic box for some delicious crab.
As part of regular enrichment activities for the octopus, aquarist Bill Murphy hides food in plastic boxes with different types of "locks" the octopus must figure out. In this case, the box being used had a hole in it created by the aquarium's previous resident octopus and, rather than open the top, the octopus just sort of poured himself in. When the aquarium really wants to frustrate their octopus, they just give it a Pepsi bottle cap with a 12 digit code that requires online registration to see if you won.
More details and accurate info can be found on the NEAQ's blog.
Here's a great video of Bill and the NEAQ's previous resident octopus cuddling.
And here's some video I shot this weekend visiting the NEAQ with my family
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Great pics!
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/03/truman-octopus.html
As part of regular enrichment activities I suggest that a newborn piglet in a crib is parked next to the octopus tank. Also they should put up a poster of Japanese girl in the school uniform on the wall for the poor Mr. Octopus.
Oh Andy, now the whole world knows that you can walk like a penguin.
Many thanks for sharing the pics. Fantastic creature!!
http://www.kelebek.gen.tr
This is just another reason why Cephlapods WILL run the world one day. I'm content to be one of their ugly, pink Sapien pets. ;-p
I really wanted a polar bear to appear and eat Karen.
There's an article in the latest Smithsonian Zoogoers magazine discussing ways of hiding food to emulate the action of foraging for the Zoo's animals. There's a great picture of a box a lion destroyed trying to get the food out of it...the picture being great because, appearing very tiny in the background, the lion is watching the human holding the former food-box with great interest.
http://www.kelebek.gen.tr
Cuddling may be putting it mildly.
Damn! I'd love to pet an octopus! Even with the risk of hickeys.
In other news, a chimp has been observed to calmly manufacture clay discs which he then hurls at the zoo visitors later in the day. He has been practising the hit-the-visitor-with-an-expensive-camera game for a long time - he used to throw rocks at them atfirst but now he prefers the chimp-made missiles. One theory is that chimp realized that he can have better aim with the uniformly-sized missiles that he makes for himself; chimps are known to be quite bad at target-throwing but they learn with enough practice...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16726-missilethrowing-chimp-plots…
Oh man, THIS is what I come here for--hot young tattooed scientists playing with cephalopods. That was an awesome video. I love seeing the close-ups of the suckers and how mobile they are. Horrifying and yet fascinating.
What a shame the last scene in the commercial wasn't Karen covering herself with shiny Mardi Gras beads and falling into the barracuda tank. Ah well.
Was this intended to be sexy? If not, I have a brand new subject for my shrink... Hot nerdy men snuggling giant Pacific octopi fetish :/
I'm pretty sure Japan's got that one covered. If not, they've got research teams with tentacle-wrapped-tattooed-men-porn in the early stages of development.
Cuddling may be putting it mildly.