[Octopus]: Margay - O. Burryi

The video editor I like the best (takes a little getting use to but it has just the right features for hobby video) is VideoPad Video Editor from NCH Software. HOWEVER, it is not the one I am currently using. There is a free copy but it loads a ton of junk and I did not put it on my new machine. I will likely buy it at some future date.

Edit Note: I went to the NCH site after typing the above note and saw they had it on sale for $30 so I bought it. The current free version does not have all the mandatory junk (it does have some options for their other software but lacks the annoying ton of junk required installs I ended up with in my first copy) but the free version is only a trial and will watermark your videos. You can try both to see if you like this one enough to pay for it (sale ends at the end of April).

Edit 2 - you may want to double check the trial version for watermarks. It may only have annoying reminders. Playing with the 3D option now :biggrin2: If you have Red-Cyan glasses, here is the wink video in 3D - best in HD 720


The one I am currently using is Microsoft's Movie Maker. A lot of the simplistic editing is not intuitive. Hint: When you want to mark a begin and end, try using the right click on the mouse.
 
Missed a great video opportunity tonight. Margay has started coming to the glass more and more when we are near the tank. Tonight Neal opened the top and offered a finger and instead of dashing back to the wall or her rocks spread herself out as big and threatening as she could become and hovered over her rocks (she looked like she was floating but did have part of an arm on the rocks). No attack, no ink but an awesome display. Before I could even think about the camera, she was back on the wall but kept her intimidation posture. She never went into hiding so I think she is beginning to understand that we will not harm her. I have seen it for O. vulgaris in videos but this is a whole new behavior for us in the aquarium.
 
I shot a lot of video (and made a lot of contorted faces) trying to get a better angle on the "wink" that Margay does with her eyes. This is a poorly spliced clip of the best I managed. She initially would only "wink" the left eye, once again the one away from the camera. I did not realized I eventually captured the motion until I reviewed the videos as I did not see her do it with the right eye.
 
One last video today. I missed Margay's floating intimidation display but did capture the, I am big, look when Neal fed her. Sometimes she will take supper from our fingers but she is usually against the wall and needs a little coaxing by touching the shrimp to an out streached arm. Some days she will duck down into her rock and wait until you offer it on a feeding stick (she then immediately grabs it, no coaxing needed). This time she came forward on her own but made herself as big as possible and then blew at Neal's hand to tell him to go away. She proceeded to eat in plain view.

 
Lots-o-ink

Margay was walking along the top of the front of the aquarium (not something we often see) so Neal wondered if she was inviting us to come to her tank. She did continued near the surface when he went to the tank and opened the top. Normally, she will go to the rocks immediately when the top is opened since she didn't he very, very gently and slowly stroked her mantle. Once she realized what was happening she inked up a storm and flew to the back corner. She inked both types of ink, the thick settled on the substrate and was easy to slurp up but the thin, even after 10 gallons of water change took over night to clear. Fortunately, we did not have to swap out her tank. She was shy all the next day but started coming out against the back wall the next afternoon and willingly takes food from a stick. I think she will be back to normal in a day or so.
 
Toys

I could not find an octosafe string of beads in the Dollar General that was on my way to the grocery but I did find one of those crazy plastic twisted straws. Unfortunately when I gave it to Margay I realized the camera was in my office upstairs. I tried just holding it in the water like a feeding stick without food. She watched but did not come to inspect it so I touched the tip of an outstreached arm. She j u s t touched it with a couple of tiny end suckers. When I released it it did not move so she had possession. I moved away from the tank and she took it all under her webbing and tasted it then eventually it was upright again and against the wall with literally ONE sucker attached. I made a point to look directly at the straw and walked toward the tank. She quickly looped the straw in her arm tip so I think she wants to keep it. If she does not get bored with it by tomorrow, I will take some pictures :oops:
 
Angry Eyes

I have seen red eye lids (I think they are actually the equivalent of our iris but are composed of skin like our eyelids. It does not make sense for an invert to have eye lids :roll:) on a rare occasion with O. hummelincki and it definitely signified a foul mood. Margay shows this color often and I think is does show distrust but may not mean that she is angry.



When I pay attention to her, she often lightens the color but they retain some red (the color can be any of the body colors and white is most common).

I moved Onn to the tank directly across the room from Margay (Onn's nursery tank was not easily visible from Margay's) and she seemed aware that there was now an octopus in that tank. She paced much of the day.
 

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Margay is getting pissy in her maturity. The other night she came out to the front of the tank when I let the dogs out so I opened the top and stuck my fingers inside, well to the side of her. She does not see well at close quarters so we are very careful to make water motion when we put our hands in the tank in an attempt (usually a failure) to keep from startling her. She came over to my hand and pulled then sprayed a quantity of "water" out of the tank (mostly missing me). This is a first for her but I did not think much about it until the morning. With the lights on, the wet spot on the floor was INK, not water.

Tonight, Neal was feeding the polyps with a pipette and dropped it in the water. It just "disappeared" and as he went looking for it, Margary found it and claimed it as her own. When Neal tried to reach for it she inked and took it into her den. Neal tried to trade for a piece of shrimp but she was not willing to relinquish her prize (but did take her shrimp).
 
Tonight I saw Margay swimming. It is not very unusual to see a young octo occasionally swim in a tank but not common as they become adults (probably because of the lack of space). She will sometimes swim a foot or so to the transparent end of her tank and bump her mantle but tonight she repeatedly walked to about the 1/3 mark and then swam to the night lit end, then walked back to the dark side (toward her den). This is the opposite direction for other short swims and she seemed to have a good idea when the end wall approached (end wall on the night lit side has a black background vs clear window on the den side. After stopping at the wall she sort of treaded water for a few seconds then walked back along the front of the glass to the dark side. Onn is not out and I wonder if she is trying to get his attention as they were "flirt" dancing earlier today.
 
:cry: We lost Margay today in the worst possible way. I have only had an octopus escape a tank once before and that was because the top was left open. Tonight Margay did not come out to watch me set up the vitamins. This is her nightly human observation and she never fails to come to the end of the tank where I set up the shot glasses. I found this odd but she has been behaving a bit strangely and I have been afraid she would start brooding soon. I could not see her in her normal sleeping quarters but let it go until after dinner. When she still did not show, I started a serious hunt and eventually moved around her rocks. She is large enough that I should have been able to find her easily. Searching around her tank, in her sump and around the other tanks produced no octopus. When Neal went down stairs to watch TV, he called to me that he found her. She had crossed the tank room and managed to descend 13 steps before dieing. Some of her chromatophores were still firing but she was not moving or breathing. I will post final measurements later but am too sad to take them out of the camera just yet.

We are not sure how she escaped but the latch on her top has never been locked (with her or others). I had recently mentioned that this kind of top with lowered water levels seems to work well without weights or locks ..."it works until it doesn't"
 
Really, really hard to come home and try to avoid looking for her. She was not so much interactive as active and one of the special animals I have kept.
 
DWhatley said:
Really, really hard to come home and try to avoid looking for her. She was not so much interactive as active and one of the special animals I have kept.
I just read through this, and I am sorry for the loss. I really enjoyed reading about her and seeing her.
 
Final Photo

As is customary for my last journal post (and encouraged for others but it is very difficult - mentally - to do) I took photos of Margay with a measuring tape in an attempt to document sizing.
 

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