Maya has been out every day now and I am keeping my fingers tightly crossed that her initial snail collecting and hibernation were an environment acclimation and not the brooding behavior I thought. She is showing far more aggression than any of my prior octopues (of any species) and I am still not comfortable that this is not prebrooding but time will tell.
Yesterday she leaped off the rock toward my fingers, held an upright pose in the open water and then flipped upside down to attack (I removed my hand just as she flipped
). She was wearing a blue ring yellow color with an equally blue ring bright blue ocellus and looked about as poisonous as little octo can look. The hover and yellow coloring is the first time I have seen a reason they have been called the bumble bee octopus. Unfortunately, no pictures. (Tomorrow I am going to the local camera shop to see if I can get a part for my tripod so that I can set up the remote again).
I missed photographing another interesting sight tonight. There is a red brittle star (named Peskytoo) in her tank. We had not seen it too often before there was an octopus and I assumed it was just more recluse than Pesky (in SueNami/Kaysoh's tank) but since Maya's arrival we see it often and it forages her dens much of the time. Tonight it crawled into the den and Maya decided she did not want company and pushed Peskytoo out. The star lived up to its name though and crawled back in so Maya just moved back and let Peskytoo clean up her dinner scraps.
Maya continued showing aggressive behavior through the weekend and I did get a couple of shots and a two minute kaleidoscope of color changes video but nothing like the hover, flip and strike.
Today she showed another interesting pose that had 6 arms on the glass, body floating out into the water and two arm out in front with the tips curled and placed at a slight angle from the rest of the arms. It looked every bit like a boxing challenge. This time the camera was close but the focus button stuck and it took me too long to correct to get a good shot. She moved one of the arms back to the glass but you can see the other still in boxing formation.
We put SueNami's plastic ice cube in the tank again and this time I touched her arm with the shrimp and she grabbed the shrimp and tie. The next time I looked over at her (maybe 15 min later) we found she was at the top of the tank and holding onto the cube. She is much lighter than SueNami so it did not sink but did make me think she may need some toys. I constructed something with the ice cube and a hose barb after she went to bed so we will see if she chooses to explore it tomorrow.
I may be mistaken but I am expecting less agressiveness tomorrow based upon her behavior tonight. I will miss the displays and I really wanted to get a video of the bumble bee but will be glad if she is beginning to trust her surroundings.