Awww, it’s a charming little story about the intelligence of the octopus:
Ah, the creepy-crawly creature, the swarming arms, that deep-sea demeanor. This is the bearer of intelligence?
“That was my attitude, too,” confesses science writer Eugene Linden, who has written about animal intelligence since the 1970s and had focused, mostly, on the “big-brained” creatures such as apes, dolphins, elephants and whales. “I shared all the prejudices everybody else has.”
Then he started hearing octopus stories. Like how they can open screw-top jars and hamster balls and child-proof caps. They can do mazes and learn shapes and distinguish colors and use tools.
“They play,” says Jennifer Mather, a psychologist and octopus expert at Canada’s University of Lethbridge.
There are even hints that octopuses have a sense of humor, Linden says.
He talks about the finicky octopus who, in a lab in Pennsylvania, was served slightly spoiled shrimp. The octopus refused to finish its dinner, and when the feeding researcher returned to its tank, the octopus made eye contact with her, then meaningfully pushed all the shrimp down the drain.
A great deal of that is the interpretation of the human observer, of course; it could be the octopus isn’t making a joke at all, but is instead mentally noting the face of the offending person and promising itself to make her pay someday. But still, it’s clear that some wonderfully sophisticated things are going on inside those big invertebrate brains.
(Thanks to Mrs Coulter)
Some researchers see humour in the behaviour of octopuses. PZ sees a burning thirst for vengeance. Outstanding.
Whereas I simply see the equivalent of a majorly annoyed and slightly sarcastic lecture. But I have three cats, so I’m predisposed to see that sort of thing. :)
My zoology professor once told me this story. When he was working at the Anton Dohrn Zoology Institute in Naples, they had a room with several large acquaria in a row – in one they kept an octopus, in another some large prawns, the two being separated by a tank of fish. All tanks were covered by grates with large holes.
One morning, the researchers found a few prawns missing, with shells and bits floating around. Next morning, same thing. The biologists were baffled – could the prawns be attacking and eating each other at night? They did not seem aggressive during the day. One researcher agreed to stand watch for the night.
Shortly after the lights went out, the octopus pulled itself out of its tank, slid over the next one, dived into the prawn tank and had dinner. Then, with a full stomach, calmly returned to his own tank.
Like how they can open screw-top jars and hamster balls…
Oh boy, somebody better warn Cute Overload.
This reminds me of that South Park episode where they discover that the writers of Family Guy are really Manatees putting balls with topics into a tube in different order, thus creating the script. I can only begin to imagine what kind of TV-show octopods would create.
Shortly after the lights went out, the octopus pulled itself out of its tank, slid over the next one, dived into the prawn tank and had dinner. Then, with a full stomach, calmly returned to his own tank.
I heard this one related to some aquarium in Portland. Still seems plausible, but there’s a whiff of urban legend about it.
I heard this one related to some aquarium in Portland. Still seems plausible, but there’s a whiff of urban legend about it.
Could well be a marine biologist urban legend, though as I remember it our prof told us it happened while he was there.
The alternative is that this is just routine m.o. for octopi/uses/odes. It may reflect some natural behavior, e.g. tidal pool “hopping” in search of trapped critters.
Perhaps dumping out all its shrimp was the octopus’ way of saying that it wanted blue crab for dinner?
Only vaguely related question:
Does anyone know how “killer prawns” got that name?
Does anyone know how “killer prawns” got that name?
Ya see these ‘ere scars on me leg? It was the prawns what did it, it was. I’ll ne’er fergit the night the S.S. Scampi ran aground in the shoals off Shell Island. Twelve good men set sail that day, and only two returned to tell the bloody tale. And th’ other feller’s in the nuthouse, he is. Drove ‘im stark ravin’ mad, it did. Aye, killer prawns they’re called, and killer prawns they be!
So’s if’n ya don’t mind, I’ll be havin’ the steak entree. Well done.
I used to be acquainted with an octopus that would hang out in its clear tank during the day up near the top, just below the surface, apparently hungering for social contact. It liked to be patted and reciprocally would wrap some arms around the hand of the patter. Once it got three or four arms attached, it would haul the patting person in close, lift its siphon out of the water, and well and truly douse him. It’s like a garden hose on full for about two seconds. I’m still wet.
Are there any good documentaries available about cephalopods? I’d love to have some quality footage and ecological info, especially of that Indonesian mimic octopus PZ linked to a while back. That was quite possibly the coolest animal I’ve ever seen.
That will bring you to the paper “Dynamic mimicry in an Indo-Malayan octopus”, which includes quicktime videos as supplemental material.
You can also try Googling for (Norman Finn Tregenza) (the names of the authors of the original paper). There’s more stuff out there by them related to octopodes.
The story of the octupus and the prawns is very much an urban legend. I heard a different version of that same story at a pet store specializing in salt water aquariums. But this time it was supposedly caught on camera.
However that same store did keep occasionally special order an octopus for customers. They were kept inside a tank in one of the smaller plastic fish carrying containers because they had issues with other octopii escaping. The containers they sold were clear pvc, with a plastic mesh top containing a hinged pvc door. A rock was then placed on top of the door because the octopii could open the doors and escape. I didn’t believe it until I saw one that had crawled up to the door and was pushing on it for all he was worth. If that rock wasn’t there he would have escaped.
The manager claimed one had escaped before and had hidden itself in the bulk live-rock tank. Which was kept on the floor under the display aquariums with the fish. He had assumed it had escaped, crawled in another tank, and had been eaten by one of the many predatory fish. He sure got a surprise when he grabbed the wrong piece of live wrong one day. But not nearly as surprised as the time he found the piece of rock with a mantis shrimp living in it…. ouch.
This should work as a permanent, single clickable link:
Dynamic mimicry in an Indo-Malayan octopus
Don’t forget the octopus that ate the sharks at the Seattle
aquarium, great for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/cephalopods_rule/
Here is another octopus for your collection.
http://octopusconspiracy.com/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7933887031585756957&q=%22mantis+shrimp%22&hl=en
“Shortly after the lights went out, the octopus pulled itself out of its tank, slid over the next one, dived into the prawn tank and had dinner. Then, with a full stomach, calmly returned to his own tank.”
“I heard this one related to some aquarium in Portland. Still seems plausible, but there’s a whiff of urban legend about it.”
“The story of the octupus and the prawns is very much an urban legend. I heard a different version of that same story at a pet store specializing in salt water aquariums.”
huh…my wife swears to a first-person version of this story that occurred while doing a marine-biology semester on the island of St. Croix…peoples’ experiments were being screwed with (disappearing crabs, etc.) and she and some fellow students staked out the lab one night…she claims (and she never lies)(or so she claims, heh) to have personally witnessed an octopus in the end aquarium make its way through three previously depredated tanks to eat the crab in the fourth one down, then return home, REPLACING THE LIDS.
hmm, CCP, now you’re making me wonder–my friend, a marine biologist, claims to have witnessed something similar at an aquarium she worked at in California–disappearing lobsters, octopus returning home and replacing the lid, caught only on videotape, etc.
Either there’s a lot of cephalopod cleverness going on all over, or the marine invertebrate folks are pulling our collective legs. I believed the story when she told me, but all these anecdotes with the same details are starting to get suspicious.
On the other hand, the captive sun bear who used its rice ration to lure chickens (for arroz con pollo!)–now THAT was playful and clever! And it must be true, because I heard it from a bear biologist :).
Regarding the stories of the octopus sneaking out of its tank, eating other sealife, then sneaking back:
The book The Octopus and the Orangutan, by Eugene Linden, also mentions these anecdotes. The earliest one mentioned is from 1964, which allegedly happened in Jacques Cousteau’s facility. Other locations cited are the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Seattle Aquarium, and the Steinhardt Aquarium. There’s disagreement even among experts as to how true they are. Tidepool navigation is mentioned as an argument in favor; apparantly they often “freak out” (sorry, that’s the term used) when completely out of water, which is an argument against.
Obviously, more hard data is necessary. And it would be interesting to see a video of an octopus breaking out of a tank.
Nova covered octopuses: “The Great Octopus Show”. I first saw the octopus vs. shark video there. It also had video of an octopus squelching over to the tank of a crab, which I thought looked as if it could tell Cthulhoid doom was bearing down upon it. But it’s a crab, so I’m sure I was projecting onto its carapace. (I also kept thinking of Vogons smashing jewlled crabs.) The point is that it was on video. I think the stories all sound the same because it’s a common situation with an obvious solution (for the octopus.) Octopus in tank over here, food in tank over there. Octopus can leave tank (and, more interestingly, find its way back.) The laws of intelligence and hunger take their course.
Dogs chase sticks. Cats leave body parts around the house. Human males get certain magazines sticky. Octopuses go after prey.