Social Octopus Thread?

Spirula

Cuttlefish
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I'm making this thread for two reasons:
1) I don't think there are any TONMO threads dedicated to social behavior in octopuses besides the posts for specific articles

2) My non-scientist friend is in a class which is more or less on non-human sapience/culture (the class has a lot of Jane Goodall studying primates type things) and I convinced him to write his paper on octopuses! I pointed him to the Jervis Bay octos* (there's a new paper out on them, yay!) and O. chierchiae but was wondering if there were other examples of social behavior in octos?

Also wondering if O. laqueus actually has been observed sharing dens as I can't find any reliable accounts of it?

*to clarify I did point out that O. tetricus are generally solitary and this is unusual

I am tagging based off what I've seen on TONMO - please tag relevant people or tell me if I've tagged the wrong people haha
@pgs @jugglematt @mucktopus @Neogonodactylus @Thales
 
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Adding a link to the original Jarvis Bay, Octopuses living in groups and more stuff, thread. Near the end of the current thread are links to additional content. And here is a link to @pgs page of ceph related publications (the ones including as coauthor @jugglematt will be about Jarvis bay).

I am not sure about O. chierchiae living socially but the Larger Pacific Stripped Octopus (related to O. chierchiae) is the most recent find with social behavior. Here is a brief from the California Academy of Sciences and a paper, Behavior and Body Patterns of the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus
by @Neogonodactylus, @Thales, @mucktopus and Arcadio Rodaniche (the first person to record and attempt to publish the unusual nature of this animal).

Something that has often been overlooked and not studies is the known behavior of O. mercatoris living in close proximity (social behavior unknown) in the wild and the ability to keep several in an aquarium. How true this is of large egg dwarfs has (to my knowledge) not been studied but may be more common due to their benthic from birth nature than is believed. @Thales may have input on this with O. chierchiae.
 
Thanks @Spirula --

D has offered one of our best threads about this (octopuses living in groups) but there are a few others on here if you dig around... "Social behavior" is a pretty broad topic, though... I think you'd find a lot if you did a search for "mating" and "fighting," for example... ways they display around each other, etc...

Also, I think you tagged the right folks :smile: - hopefully they will chime in!
 
Thank you both!

I thought O. chierchiae was the scientific name of the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus haha Thank you for clarifying that.

I will look into O. mercatoris... sounds like it might be a research opportunity :biggrin2:

I suppose by social behavior I'm specifically interested in octopus who have prolongued contact with each other - e.g. those who are frequently found living in close proximity to at least one other octo. Though all interactions (e.g. fighting) are secondarily interesting. I don't know what other people are interested in?

My friend is interested in how octopuses perceive each other/ the world I guess? Like if one octo can't open a jar with a crab inside it then it sees another octo do it and octopus 1 is it then able to do it, is it because the first octopus sees the second opening the jar and mimics the action or is it because it sees the other open the jar and think "I can mess with the jar too" then open it by experiment. At least that was an example of a question he found after I convinced him to look into octopuses. He's interested in thinking I guess? But a part of that can be social interaction.
 
There is Octopus laqueus might also be considered. See Eric Edsinger's (Eric's TONMO name escapes me at the moment) FB page to read a little about what he is doing to try to raise squid and octopus for science. He calls the Octopus laqueus, friendly octopus. However, if you read through the linked post it appears they will eat each other's eggs.

 

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