Thank you again for the wonderful questions! I have answered them at the bottom of this post. As an update, the octopus was fed the raw food for the first week and would come out of his den about 75% of the way to take his food from a stick. He was not very social at the beginning and would hide most of the time, playing with the toys put into the tank for only a few seconds.. The second week when we introduced the live food, he became much more active. He would come out to search for the live shrimp or crab in the tank and attack. He would then take a long time to digest and then become curious of the tank and other animals such as the slipper lobster and batfish and swim around. Along with this, he would play with the toys longer and grab onto my hand for a few moments, but then let go. The third week we started with the puzzles and the live food. He absolutely loves it. We have a jar that he is learning to open along with a hamster ball (the ball is his favorite, hes already an expert at opening it). He now will play for long periods of time and try to pull me into the tank (literally, he is extremely strong).
Unfortunately, I cannot get any videos to load of the octopus, as soon as they upload to YouTube I will post some (early this week)! But here are some photos of him playing!
Questions:
Is there anything that would distinguish the gender of an octopus and if so, what are the features?
Yes, the difference between genders is that a male will have less suckers on the third arm to the right on his body. This is because this is where the male organ is to reproduce with the female.
Since an octopus has eight legs, does this increase it's overall strength compared to other sea creatures the same size? If so, what is the comparison. Also, does it have the strength to overpower something larger in size?
Absolutely. Octopus are mainly made up of mainly muscle and tissue, so having eight, strong, muscular legs compared to just two like us, their strength is definitely increases. I couldn't give an exact comparison, but most animals in the ocean don't have legs except for crabs, some fish, turtles, etc. and these aren't particularly "strong" animals even if they have other good adaptations. And yes, since they are so strong, they can overpower larger animals. As stated above, my octopus is strong enough to latch onto me with three or four legs and pull be down with the rest. There are some videos of giant octopus taking on sharks that try to eat them and winning.
Are there behaviorial difference between the sexes of octopus? If your octopus were a female, would it cause different results in stimuli?
As far as regular day to day behavior, feedings and stimuli in and out of the tank, the behavior seems to be the same. The only difference really comes to reproduction when males are looking for females they are very aggressive towards other males and "picky" in the females of their choice. When the females are protecting their eggs, they don't move and are very inactive besides keeping the eggs safe. The males will continue on to find more females to reproduce with until they die.
I just need to know about that head! What's the deal with it? In one picture is seems to be holding carrots while in all others it seems to drag it around. Is there a brain in there or what? And why does it drag it around rather than hold it upright like all other animals?
The head of the octopus or the "mantle" holds all of its organs. Its brains (they have three), stomach, hearts (three as well) intestines, etc are located within. It has a very strong muscle around the outside of it which protects everything inside (I've touched the head of my octopus as he lets me do that now, and it is a lot sturdier than it appears). When he is swimming around the tank, he will push it up against the side of the tank to somewhat hold it up, but since it is so large, it is very hard to hold up even though it is a muscle it still has his organs and everything else inside which make it very heavy. So, it kind of just drags behind them as they swim and rest. Sometimes you can actually watch them pump water in and out when they're digging in the sand and it will increase and decrease in size. I think what you mean by the carrots are the orange things on the sides of his head? Those are where he pumps water in and out of the mantle and over he gills. The tube you see is a siphon where he pumps the water out including waste and shedding.
- As always, I love all of the questions! Keep them coming!
No comments:
Post a Comment