New Hannibal video

tonmo

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Thanks to Jean for sending in a video of Hannibal for us all to enjoy. It's a 5 meg .AVI file:

[URL2=[URL]http://www.tonmo.com/images/vids/hannibal.AVI]Hannibal[/URL] contemplating escape[/URL2]

This has been added to the TONMO.com Video Gallery. Thanks again Jean for the contribution!
 
wow...I love looking at octopuses, lol. Were was this located and how big was this octopus? It looks pretty large.

If I was there...and if I got permission to touch it, I would have the whole time, lol. I just recently did a research project related to octopuses for school...and of course...theres bound to be immature idiots there, so my octopus photo's taken at the aquarium were ripped up by comments, lol.

People are way too ethnocentric these days judging animals or anything in comparision to HUMAN beings when octopuses are nothing like humans accept for their intelligence. Iv noticed that normal humans respond better and appeal better to animals that resemble humans more such as dogs, cats, lions...tigers and so on. Octopus are totally unlike humans and I love that about them.
 
Hi Armstrong,

That was taken in the Portobello Marine Lab's teaching lab! The NZ marine studies centre and aquarium are part of this facility, which is owned by the Dept of Marine Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ (check out www.otago.ac.nz/marinescience :biggrin2: ).

And yes Hannibal is pretty large (although he still has some growing to do!) His mantle is about the size of a rugby ball and his arm spread is about 1.5m (we haven't weighed him yet but he is heavy!!!). As a general rule we don't allow the octi's to be handled as their skin is too delicate, but under closely supervised very occassional sessions we may sometimes.

In the case of the video the children involved were learning to handle octopus as part of a programme for gifted children. These kids had to come up with a question related to the octopus's senses and then figure out a way to test it!! My group came up with "Can octopus visually discriminate between and recognise different patterns?" :shock: (Remember these Kids are between 9 & 12 years old!!!). They then set about training an octopus to look under a container with a pattern of spots on it for food (the food was ONLY under that container). Then they would present the octopus with a choice of patterns (including the spots) and see if it knew where the food was...............it did!

They then moved on to Hierarchy formation in midgets (rather like Perke's project!) but they were interested in how the octopus sensed the difference in each other!!! This part is ongoing!!

Cheers

J
 
That sounds very interesting. Im glad to see children acting mature and being responsive in a positive way with the octopus. I wish high school kids would act the same...sadly, as people age...they get worse before they get better, lol. At least around here. But I hear the same comments all the time whenever im presenting any cephalopod-octopus related project or photo's. It's very annoying, and I just wish I could yell at them and tell them stop complaining or get out.

But, I recently saw...today this morning before the school bus arrived...a half hour documentary on the octopus called "Champs of the wild" on Animal Planet. I loved it, and it showed nothing but giant pacific octopuses near the shore at the coasts of Washington area. A man narrated the documentary who has been studying the octopus for 30 years consistently and has finally had the chance to show what he knew. Most of the facts were ordinary and basic...however, the footage they showed to express what he knew was lovely and I liked seeing the giant octopuses being handled by divers. They even showed a deceased female mother octopus being eaten by a huge starfish...unfortunately, the octopus was ripped to shreds. Looked very sad.

The octopus shares a simple lesson at least. Even though it's appearance is usually sickening, disgusting, horrific and deadly...not to mention slimy to the natural human reaction, there actually gentle, timid and harmless sea creatures full of fascination. Never judge a book by it's cover. Im dying to touch the octopus in my aquarium.
 

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