bimac behaviors information request

[GOrmCu]

hi, i'm looking for info on bimac behavior.

have already tried cephbase, but their link is out dated apperantly.
any help would be of use.


thanks

 

[Nancy]

Hi GOrmCu,

There isn't too much in this area - here's a link to an interesting article on octo behavior:

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/behavior.html

There is a book called Cephalopod Behaviour by Roger Hanlon and John Messenger.

And, you could look back over our Journals and Photos forum for descriptions of specific bimac behavior.

Hope this helps,

Nancy

 

[GOrmCu]

thank you for the link and the book reference. just wish CEPHALOPODS: A WORLD GUIDE had a bit more on behavior.

 

[Andy Lister]

I wonder why so little has been written,

Surely we have enough graduates on this board and enough people with massive amount of knowledge to write a book together!

I feel a project comming on!

 

[Nancy]

Hi Andy

There seem to be several reasons for no book covering bimac (or octo) behavior. First of all, most scientific studies are narrow, covering only one specific behavior and there aren't many of those published. The results are usually journal articles. Some are posted on the web, and some are not.

Like the Cephalopod Behavior book, they may cover squid and cuttlefish in addition to octos, so the octo content is not so large. Most of us find that the Ceph Behavior book approach is not what we're looking for.

But, on the other hand, it's not easy to track and document behavior in a controlled way and we need many examples to even begin to draw conclusions. Each person can do help by observing and reporting about his octopus or maybe even running some simple behavioral experiments.

I hope we have a beginning of a better record of bimac behavior from what is reported here on TONMO.com under the Journals and Photos. As far as behavior goes, I think we've just scratched the surface and need many more examples before we can draw conclusions, given the variety in the behavior shown so far.

Nancy