Hey everybody, long time no posts for me! Life has gotten quite busy and somehow, even though I now work at the National Aquarium (not in husbandry, so there's my excuse), I seem to have forgotten how to identify an octopus! Anyway, I was at a local store and they had an octopus that they had gotten in from "Florida". Not sure if this was transshipped and was simply originating from a supplier there or if it was actually harvested there, but it looked to be a healthy specimen so I wanted to inquire about what it was here from the experts.
The octopus was a smaller one, mantle was perhaps 3-5" across when it was spread out. The arms seemed to be slightly raised at the top with a "flap" of skin raised above and the suckers looked to alternate instead of being in rows. It alternated between close to white to brown splotchy, no rings. The mantle extended between each arm resulting in "webbing" between each arm. The skin went from fairly smooth to bumpy and it appeared to have some cirri above each eye. The eyes were not especially large, but also not especially small... I know, not a great way to describe the eyes! For comparison, there was another octopus that appeared to have very small eyes and another one that seemed to have very large eyes, neither of which was very healthy (3 out of 4 were not great). I took some interest in this one and watched it eat, but didn't want to take it unless I had a good ID of it. Forgot to take a picture to help...
Is it possible that it is an O. vulgaris? The people at the store kept on repeating the same canned information to me - it gets to about 3' and lives about 3 years... so they've identified it as being something between a GPO and a O. vulgaris... a great help!
Any help you can provide would be great.
The octopus was a smaller one, mantle was perhaps 3-5" across when it was spread out. The arms seemed to be slightly raised at the top with a "flap" of skin raised above and the suckers looked to alternate instead of being in rows. It alternated between close to white to brown splotchy, no rings. The mantle extended between each arm resulting in "webbing" between each arm. The skin went from fairly smooth to bumpy and it appeared to have some cirri above each eye. The eyes were not especially large, but also not especially small... I know, not a great way to describe the eyes! For comparison, there was another octopus that appeared to have very small eyes and another one that seemed to have very large eyes, neither of which was very healthy (3 out of 4 were not great). I took some interest in this one and watched it eat, but didn't want to take it unless I had a good ID of it. Forgot to take a picture to help...
Is it possible that it is an O. vulgaris? The people at the store kept on repeating the same canned information to me - it gets to about 3' and lives about 3 years... so they've identified it as being something between a GPO and a O. vulgaris... a great help!
Any help you can provide would be great.