New Aculeatus(?) Journal - Octopus Prime!

thank you!

OP is still doing well. I seem to be slowly earning Prime's trust; as his tendency to turn dark and hide when i come near is diminishing day by day. I have been giving him a piece of (raw, frozen, thawed) shrimp about half the size of his mantle each day, but he doesnt seem to eat much of it; jettisoning it after about 15 minutes of nibbling, about 80% intact, which i then remove. As of now he still has only eaten one of the five hermit crabs. The fiddler crabs will be arriving tomorrow and hopefully they will be of interest (and small enough to chow on). otherwise i'll try to order some baby clams. any other suggestions for live food if fiddlers dont work out?

I was also wondering if anyone could suggest "play" type activities that prove to be engaging to smaller octopuses. I tried playing with the magnetic glass cleaner in front of him while he was out exploring the tank outskirts. it seemed to interest him but he was very cautious. What games do you guys like to play with your smaller, non-bimac octopuses?
 
oy, he really doesn't seem interested in/able to eat the hermit crabs. I just tried placing a snail upside down outside his den, no reaction. then i grabbed a hermit crab and placed it upside down near his den, but he was more interested in feeling my finger. Finally i tried one more (a slightly smaller crab) which he grabbed and wrapped himself around, but dropped without having extracted the crab.

Is it possible that the hermit crab defenses are really that effective or is he just not interested in eating them? should i keep pushing live food or stick to what works (frozen shrimp)?

here's a picture of him decidedly NOT devouring a very vulnerable crab. look closely and you can see him watching quietly on the left as the crab struggles to right itself:
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at any rate, fiddler crabs will be offered soon.
 
My advice would be to offer what works, but also try various other types of food, so you're not stuck with only one type. Mostly likely he'll go for fiddlers.

I never had too much luck with my bimac. For a whle she liked fresh scallops as well as shrimp (frozen and fresh) and crabs. One day she didn't like scallops anymore. She never liked any kind of fish and despite my very great efforts to procure a piece of freshly killed, unfrozen and uncooked lobster, she didn't like it.

However, there was one octopus described in this forum that preferred frozen shrimp and only frozen shrimp. So you never know.

Nancy
 
i got my package of fiddler a couple hours ago and offered one to octopus prime. he happily accepted it once he felt it with his arm and has been chomping away for the last 15-20 minutes :biggrin2:
 
There must be something about the "taste" of the outer shell of fiddlers that octopuses find appealing. Octane would not have been likely to have ever seen a fiddler but would have been exposed to mithrax. Given the choice, she preferrs the fiddlers. Shrimp, however, are turning out to be a big favorite.
 
Yes it has been interesting to observe the taste-by-touch phenomenon. i have noticed that octopus prime seems pretty disinterested in most things until laying a few suckers on it (or until i place it in an arm) at which point s/he tends to decide it's close enough to food and take it under, or decide it's just the latest annoying gesture by the pet human, Mike,, and push it away.

Yesterday, for the first fiddler crab feeding, i held it out near him/her but there were no signs of interest until i touched it to an arm. then the crab was excitedly eaten. during today's feeding, i was planning on doing the same thing but i accidentally dropped the crab. The moment octopus prime saw it scurry towards it, s/he seemed to know it was a meal and pounced on it when there was an openning, trapping it under it's net.

Perhaps the there are characteristic "scurrying" movements that can trigger the hunting/feeding behavior, and otherwise octo.s rely on taste/touch
 
One of the interesting things about ceph nervous systems being more "spread out" than us mere vertebrates is that the arms actually show pretty sophisticated behaviors... severed arms (sad, but at least they grow back) will, on their own, grab things with the suckers, and if they're food pass them toward the mouth, and otherwise pass them away... so the brain may do more handling of "coordinating" the arms, but the arms are more autonomous. The brain handles decision making, initiating actions like strikes or flight, processing vision and running the camouflage, but the arms actually do the "tasting" and a lot of the muscle control and coordination on their own. I'm sure "scurrying" draws octos attention, but they will also strike at outline pictures of crabs, so they can certainly recognize the shape as well.
 
monty;110139 said:
I'm sure "scurrying" draws octos attention, but they will also strike at outline pictures of crabs, so they can certainly recognize the shape as well.

Fascinating! yeah i remember reading that those arms are chock full of ganglion cells. the decentralized nervous system idea is really amazing, witha central brain issuing more global commands. really cool stuff. any suggested reading?
 
Mikewise;110148 said:
Fascinating! yeah i remember reading that those arms are chock full of ganglion cells. the decentralized nervous system idea is really amazing, witha central brain issuing more global commands. really cool stuff. any suggested reading?

I learned a lot of that from a book by Wells just called Octopus, which is out of print, but very common in university libraries.

Hanlon & Messenger's Cephalopod Behavior is good in general, but I don't remember how much it says about the arms in particular.

Nixon & Young's book The Brains and Lives of Cephalopods is more about the anatomy of the central nervous system, and is really expensive, but it's got a lot of intriguing details mentioned in passing.
 
It looks like it'd be in the O. horridus species complex (judging by Cephalopods A World Guide, Mark Norman) He looks like an amazing octopus, and the colors seem great.
 
oh my goodness, a new prediction? O. horridus... i will check the boards for information on that "species complex" ...it's a new one to me!
 
here's a picture of us holding hands :smile:

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interesting... come closer...

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this week i started noticing some reddish/orange rust colored patches mixed into his camo patterns, possibly due to the improved diet? (i.e. switching from frozen shrimp to fiddler crabs). either way, Octopus Prime has gotten more and more active/curious/confident. he spends about half the day exploring the tank walls and the other half resting on/in his den. As you can see he expresses great interest in my fingers. sometimes more interest than in the food theyre holding *gulp*. i'm just not letting him get them anywhere near his beak!

I think i will start feeding every other day. on the every-day schedule, OP does not show interest in taking the crabs from my hands nor hunting them as they scurry around him, but will kill and eat them if i touch them to one of his arms. i tried skipping a day and then dropping a crab in the tank. It scurried right into the entrance of Prime's den! he perched on the opposite side of the rock and extracted the crab from the cave by wrapping his arms around the side and pulling it out. he seemed much more excited about the meal not having had one the previous day. is this advisable?

I checked out daddysquoc's thread on a suspected o.horridus and some of the camo patterns on the mantle that dont change match octopus primes. specifically there are two symmetrical blotches on the top of the mantle close to the top behind the eyes. hmm i guess we're still trying to get an ID!
 

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