Rorschach-O.Vulgaris

Well I saw it again just now. Light have been about about an hour and it was out hunting shrimp. i'm embarrassed to say I still cant tell what it is. The tank was dark so I have no idea on color. leg length is confusing me too. They seem too long for vulgaris and too short for briareus. I can also tell the little guy had a few amputations at a young age. I'm still leaning toward briareus but I cant make the call yet.
 
I emailed Tom as I was curious and he said "We only collect mercatoris as the pygmy. We have the short arm local Octopus. We feel that is the vulgaris. The long arm we have we feel is the briareus". The video made me laugh as he tried to blow the big bad camera away! LOL
 
Ok my little buddy has been out quite a bit tonight. so I have gotten a pretty good look at it.,,,I now agree it's O.vulgaris, a tiny one! I am also leaning towards female but its too early to call I think.

 
Observing Diablo,(I found it difficult to sex him) he didn't always curl the third arm and used it unlike Ollie (O. briareus) who always kept it curled and was never observed using it. Have you been able to get a good look at the suckers? Diablo had 4 enlarged suckers, photos are in his journal starting on post #224. I am really excited that you got a young one. :biggrin2:
 
Seven is like that, he keeps it curled most of the time but not always. Pen on the other hand kept is curled super tight and never used that arm.

I just haven't seen this one clear enough to make the call yet.
 
The webbing is much shorter too

for me that was the deciding factor. Color was hard too see until i shot that last video with my LED flashlight, an the arms are all different length, likely due to a life of raiding crab traps, so I could not trust the ratio of mantle to arm length.
 
Webbing is odd. I have kept a number of O. briareus of both sexes and none of them showed the fabulous webbing we see with Cassy. Her brother could be a different species if you only looked at the webbing. These two are so different that I wonder if they are only half sibblings. Little Monty has very delicate, speckled, translucent webbing all the way down the arms but we rarely see it deployed accept close to the body and the full amount of it is not apparent most of the time. Neal wants to call him a mercabriareus :biggrin2:. Vulgaris seem to be the same way.
 

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