Our Weird Octopus Behaviour

[stephentravis]

Hi,

new to this forum. Our octopus has started to act really strange lately. The water quality is fine, nothing out of the ordinary there. But the Octopus doesn't seem to be able to crawl across rocks, the bottom of the tank etc, in the way it used to. Instead of gliding across the tank, the octopus seems to get caught in forwards somersaults, rolling over itself and seeming to lose orientation. Help?! Can anyone shed some light on this situation?

We've had the octopus for just over a year now... could it be some form of octopus dementia?

 

[Lev]

Maybe it is going through senescence? That usually means it is going to die soon. What species is the octopus? Many don't live beyond a year.

Sorry.

 

[monty]

to TONMO...

I've never heard of this before, but perhaps the experienced octo-keepers have seen something similar.

From a purely theoretical guess, I'm wondering if the animal's statocyst system could be having trouble; that's the system cephs use to orient themselves to "up" similar to our inner ears. If it seems to be having trouble keeping a sense of "level" either as it's moving or all the time, that might be a possibility; unfortunately, I have no idea what could be done, even if this theory happens to be right. One thing that you could look for is whether its eyes stay level as it changes its orientation-- this system is also tied in to keeping the pupil slit parallel to the ground.

It might help the more knowledgeable folks out if they knew what species your octo is, too.

 

[Jean]

It does sound like the statocyst system is breaking down (rather like a middle or inner ear problem for us). It can happen with old age. one year old is a good age for most of the octis you seem to get over there!

Cheers

Jean

 

[corw314]

One of my octopuses, Ink lived for over a year, but towards the end not only did she go blind, but her movements became senseless, like she lost control of her legs.

And

Carol