Yeti - O. briareus

Social phase

I think Yeti is entering the "social" phase which suggests sexual maturity. She was very curious during tank cleaning and held my fingers for almost a minute without aggression and without fear. Later she popped out when I went by and then decided to put on a show. I took several videos but this one shows her approaching me with the camera (a definite first). She did not come directly to the tank side but first went to the back and then continued toward me as she hunted. Yesterday was her fast day so I think this was food demand.


This is the best size perspective shot I have been able to take. She has been with me for just shy of 4 months and is still very comfortable in a 40 gallon (actually 37 I think) tank but other than size and weird behavior, she looks like a dwarf briareus as you can see in the video.

 

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Whenever I would move the camera, she would follow. Sometimes out in the open and sometimes going behind the rocks and sneaking out of a crack. She finally must have decided I was not going to feed her right away. The snails have been in the tank a couple of weeks :roll:


 
Yeti seems to believe she needs to touch the hand that feeds her. It does not matter if we use a stick or hand feed or if it is Neal or me, she insists on reaching out and touching the feeding hand. She does not pull or attempt to bite but wriggles her arms exploring. It is not quite like she is looking for more food. In the video she drops the food and, after her exploration of my hand reaches over and picks it up. Normally, she will bring the food to her mouth but the exploration is the same.

I also noted on the video that she seems to be very far sighted, even for what I have come to expect of O. briareus. It is not unusual for the serpent to know food is in the water before an octopus detects it but Yeti was already out, expecting food and still seems to not see it while the serpent is madly trying to find it before she does.

She showed off a new "trick" the other day but has not repeated it. I walked by the tank and she was on the glass, upside down!


She is also showing curiosity about the world outside her denning rock and I found her investigating her wier


So I should not have been surprised today when I was doing water changes to look up and see her half out of the aquarim (sadly no pics - too busy coaxing her back in :roll:). The top was open but I have added weights to better secure it when closed and moved the lid pull in hopes that she won't escape while Luis cares for her when we are gone.
 

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Yeti was out and pacing when we came home. Apparently Yeti was not pleased with my son's attempts at removing shell waste when he had to move her rock. She stopped coming out at all and he claimed she would throw out the shells at feeding time and then accept food daily. We kind of rolled our eyes at this until Neal fed her the next night and she did, indeed, throw out a shell before accepting her food. She had not come out again for several days (but still eats fine) until I cleaned her tank and then she kept grabbing either my hand or the siphon. This is pretty much typical of her in that she will be very active for a few days and then seem to sleep most of the time. I am not sure it this is just an individual trait or related to her small stature. At this age her mantle should be 4" or so but it is only about an inch and a half, no more than 2 inches. It would be nice to try to breed a naturally smaller version of this animal but locating a small male is just not going to happen. Additionally, it is unlikely a successful breeding would produce a line of smaller animals.
 
Yeti continues to eat well and stay small. She is overly aggressive at feeding time in an odd way that reminds me somewhat of LittleBit. At feeding time she insists on exploring the feeding hand. If we use a stick (almost never at this point) she will still go for the hand and be quite obnoxious about wanting to capture and explore it to the point of bringing her arms out of the tank and sometimes releasing any hold fast on the tank. During her "play time" she usually (today she did drop the shrimp, never with crab claws) holds her food just to the side of her beak and we are not confident that she would not nibble if we let her bring her mouth to the captured hand so we avoid giving her full control (the beak is visible, a sign I think may show intent to bite but don't allow full access to discover if this thinking have validity). She comes out and captures my arm or hand during tank cleaning but has never bitten and is not much trouble to ignore so I am not confident that she would bite, just don't want to find our for sure :biggrin2:.

Her size remains dwarfed and the 40 is still adequate. I have considered moving her to a larger tank but can't justify the trauma (and potential push toward brooding).

Eye candy - antics while waiting for the top to be opened to be fed:


 

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I tried to video Yeti's behavior when she is fed and demonstrate how to get an octopus to release you when it is becoming too aggressive in an aquarium. As is true to their nature, she was only slightly cooperative at feeding time when I have the camera in place and the missing part of the last sentence should be completed as follows "She was not anywhere near as aggressive as she normally is".

 
While cleaning the strainer on her overflow, Yeti became very defensive of her home. After completing the maintenance I wondered if she was still pissy so I set up the camera and put my hand in to try again to see what I could capture on video and if I could better show my normal method to be released. This is the first time I remember her (or briareus in general) squirting me :biggrin2:

 
When I started to clean the left side of her tank Yeti objected so I stopped and set up the camera. She would not leave that area and I cleaned the rest of the tank waiting for her to evacuate. She stayed on the left the entire time I worked on the rest of the tank, not obviously watching me but clearly guarding the left wall. As you can see she simply did not want me to clean this side for some unknown reason. She does not hang out here at all so I don't have a clue why she objected. Also note that she tried to stop my hand but never attempted to bite.
 
Now that she is an adult, I see nothing, outside of her size, that would indicate anything other than briareus. She is definitely a keeper and a delight but I do wish she did not sleep quite so much. We only see her for maybe half an hour (some days closer to 15 minutes) a day. She is occasionally out late at night but only in short bursts. In a normal sized briareus, I would expect to see her out for more than an hour.
 
Arm Injury

I moved Yeti to the tube tank tonight in expectation of a new little briareus (I don't have shipping info yet so it may not happen). Yeti did not exactly climb IN the fish mover but covered it and attached enough to put a can under the contraption and octo and walk it across the room without incident. Last night we installed a newer model Koralia to replace one that had died. I have not kept netting (media bags) over the older style since I have never had an issue. Yes, form the title you can see where this is going. Yeti hung around at the top of her new home for a few minutes, investigated the overflow and then completely covered the new Koralia.

I probably should not have stopped to take the first photo and couple of seconds of video ...hind sight (additional photos Koralia is off)


She would not leave the Koralia and I swore she was trying to eat it. I offered her supper, which she took and even extended one arm to max length to acquire but would not unwrap herself and come to the surface in her normal feeding posture



After maybe half an hour she started to explore the tank (carrying her crab claw) but if I approached, she would return to the Koralia and engulf it. Perhaps after an hour she seemed satisfied I would not take it from her and that is when I saw that 2-3 inches of one arm (L4) was missing and very ragged (I began a self debate about clipping it cleanly to help with better regeneration). I continued to watch her and noted she put the arm up under her webbing frequently. The next time I saw the arm tip, it appeared less ragged.

What I think I just saw

Note that we have never found parts of arms in a tank after an octopus is known to lose one, however, this is the first time I know of where the damage was more or less observed. It is my conjecture that her reason for guarding the Koralia and keeping it under her webbing for so long is that she was eating the severed arm. Knowing that most octopuses are cannibalistic or at least opportunisitic (briareus is known to cannibalize conspecifics), and making the mental note that she appeared to be trying to eat the Koralia (I expected to find bite marks), this does not seem too much of a stretch.

The second thing I may have observed, this less convincing, is the cauterization of the damaged arm. I have only seen one article that studied bleeding after an injury and it mentions that they don't bleed immediately but do some 5-6 hours later. The way Yeti kept the arm tip tightly curled or up under her webbing (and the observation that the remaining tip changed from ragged with chopped flesh to a smoother - but not knife smooth - end) makes me wonder if they have a method of staunching blood loss with their beaks/venom/saliva. After maybe two hours, she explored the new tank using all eight arms with only a slight detection of favoring the damaged arm but still carrying her crab claw supper.
 

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Yeti has gone through a growth spurt since moving to the larger tank. Her mantle has grown almost inch (maybe 1/2 an inch but definitely is visually larger) in the last month. Since I have had her for 8 months (so she is likely 9-10 months old) she may be starting to produce eggs. The adult "dent" was noted in October but is only now quite visible. Her arms are normal length for O. briareus at roughly 11" unstretched and can easily stretch to 18" but are much thinner (in proportion to her small mantle size, not as if they were stunted) than others I have kept at this age. I do wonder about the tank "dwarfing" the octos since both Yeti and Little Bit were small for their species and started out in the same 40 gallon tank. Another suggestion for an enterprising Master's experiment :roll:
 
I'm so excited to read the whole story of Yeti! I'm sure it will give me a lot of great information I can use for our new octo! :smile:
 
Yeti - 2012/05/09 - 2013/01/25

Yeti grew quite a bit after being placed in the larger tank then became less feisty and I expected she was about to brood. She boarded up a den and excreted a salmon colored paste that did not look anything like normal waste but not at all like eggs. When it was clear she was dieing, I placed her in a breeder net and saw the pasty material come out from under her mantle and not through her funnel. Because of her unusually small size, I suspect the failed eggs were a genetic defect and not related to being placed in an aquarium as I have had other unmated females to successfully produce normal infertile eggs. My feisty little girl was one of my all time favorites and I keep expecting her to be in the tank when I look at it :cry:.

 

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