([Edit by tonmo]: I moved this from a thread over in Marketplace. What ensues is a discussion / debate related to responsible cephkeeping and breeding)

If you can't sell all of them, will you be able to put them back in the ocean, in a place where bimacs are found?

Nancy

If you can't sell all of them, will you be able to put them back in the ocean, in a place where bimacs are found?

Nancy

thats not a good idea!!
hvant you ever heard NOT to put things BACK into the ocean!!! They have prob. come across alot of other parasites and other things that arent native to where he would be letting them go!
not a good idea IMO

:chillpil:

What do you think captive breeding programs do? I don't think parasites are too big of an issue with cephalopods...

FF218, I'm not a ceph-keeping expert but I know the Seattle Aquarium has done this with their cephs in the past.

Cephalopods do harbor parasitic animals...

Right. I didn't say they didn't. Virtually all life forms harbor parasitic animals, but not all are harmful, or deadly. He could have used NSW, then the same parasites would be on the wild animals as well.

Captive bred animals are not allowed to be released into the wild. Period.

The only times that they have been have met with mixed results, and usually a failure. The problem is, why are these octopus being produced if there is no where for them to go?

He thought he would be lucky to have 1 alive after a month.

BTW PM me if you want one, because I am not going to try and keep track of these threads.
Alex

This reminds me of the "burmese python" problem....people just bred them willy-nilly, and when they couldn't sell them, released them.
Now we have breeding populations of them in the wild. Nice job.

well, a not-so-minor difference is that bimacs are native to southern California. But the points about picking up parasites and pathogens and whatnot from other animals in tanks are still valid. It's not clear whether it's cruel to release a tank-raised bimac into the wild, either... I know it's questionable to release a cat that's lived indoors and been fed cat food for its whole life and expect it to learn to fend for itself, although I think most of the time they can adapt; I'm not sure where octopuses would fall on that aspect...

Anyway, releasing the burmese pythons in Burma would seem like a better idea than, say, Wisconsin. Likewise for those Snakehead fish.

I firmly believe that once an animal is removed from the wild, it is genetically "dead". Rehabilitation sometimes works, if the animal is released exactly where it was taken, but the mortality rate is over 75% for all of the rehabed animals in Arizona that are released back.

The big problem was addressed quite well by Crichton a few years back, when he stated that: "scientists only ask themselves can we, rather than should we." (to paraphrase)

I don't breed all of my captive animals. There is no market for Kribensis here, or for albino garter snakes...what would I do with the young? Cull them or release them? Better to not breed them at all until I have a buyer. The same goes for the dwarf octopus we were working with...I checked with all of the aquarium distributors, and none of them were interested at all. So we cancelled the effort.
Better to study them in the wild, and it gives me another excuse to get down to Mexico more often.

Greg

To be fair, I don't think a lot of people "choose" to breed octopus...

I agree. If my octopus laid eggs, I would do my best to raise the babies. In fact...very few people can breed them if they try simply because of the cannibalism.

To be fair, I don't think a lot of people "choose" to breed octopus...


Hmmm. It sounds like several of us have though, doesn't it? Responsibility for the animals you rip out of the wild is not light.

A lot of us choose to raise the offspring, but not breed.

Breed-To cause to reproduce, especially by controlled mating and selection.

Not many people control the mating of their octopuses.

...then you shouldn't be keeping them.

No fighting..lol

We shouldn't be keeping them because it could lay eggs that might grow up to adults that take a little while to find homes? he never said that he was releasing them. Just because he didn't find homes right away doesn't mean he is irresponsible...

Hmmm. It sounds like several of us have though, doesn't it? Responsibility for the animals you rip out of the wild is not light.

And several of us have been successful. Let's hope that perhaps many more of us will be and can supply the demand with captive bred aquacultured specimens probably cheaper and take pressure off of the collection of wild species at the same time.

Having to assist in the euthanasia of too many hundreds of pets for a few years, I know what irresponsible ownership is.

I would imagine if anyone contacted online stores they could probably find some willing to buy/sell the babies.

That is a load.

Almost NO demand is out there for captive bred octopus's...most don't want to deal with the requirements that cephs tag along with them.
Until you have an established line of control for the youngsters, captive breeding is equal to bragging. Nothing else.

I think it's worth pointing out a couple of things about ceph biology that seem to have been overlooked in this discussion:

1) female cephs can store sperm for a long time, so often if you get an adult female, she can lay eggs even if you don't "bring in a stud." I'm not sure how many of the tank-raised female octos are separated enough that they can't have been fertilized by the ones they've been raised by, but certainly most wild-caught female cephs seem to be ready to breed.

2) cephs' reproductive strategy is "have a whole lot of babies, and most of them won't survive." Even in the case of cats and dogs, it's hard to find owners to give away a whole litter; if you feel obligated to raise all the octo babies, it's just nuts, and it's unnatural to expect that more than a small number would grow to adulthood, even in the wild. Heck, they eat each other. That's not to say that people shouldn't make some effort to treat the animals with respect, but as much as it's human/mammal/vertebrate nature to treat every baby as an important individual, in most invertebrates, that's anthropomorphizing to a degree that's really unnatural. Cephs, by virtue of having more brains and personality than most inverts (I know various folks would insist than I mention stomatopods and jumping spiders and maybe bees and mantids here) really do have enough individuality that there is a tendency to have the "every baby is a unique, lovable, individual," but the way the animals work in the wild doesn't really work so well with that. (As humans, we're also pretty inconsistent about that, in that we apply it to kittens and puppies, but not so much to veal, bacon, chicken, and turkey.)

I bet if we could have a conversation about this with an octopus, cuttlefish, or squid, it would think us goofy monkeys had some very odd and unrealistic attitudes... I imagine a cuttle or squid saying "well, yeah, joe was a great guy, but there weren't enough fish around, so I ate him (with fava beans and a nice Chianti)"

Anyway, raising cephs seems to have a difficult balance at best, and more likely an impossibile contradiction: either all the babies die, or a whole lot of babies live, and you have to find something humane and reasonable to do with them. Immediately. Before they eat you out of house and home and eat each other. And they have to each go to a new owner that has an octo-proofed tank big enough to hold an adult that has been cycled for 3 months and doesn't have a ceph or any fish in it. And they (by some standards) must also be prepared to care for hundreds or thousands of offspring that their new pet may produce.

There's a little more middle ground with cuttles, but seeing Cuttlegirl's recent experience with Baby A's eggs, she's had to struggle to find homes for the 91 eggs. And if just a quarter of the folks who got some of those eggs have their cuttles reproduce, I think we'll have saturated the Bandensis hobby market, at least insofar as it exists around TONMO.

Well, that certainly is a bunch of excuses.

No matter what, unless you can provide for the young, you have no business having the animal. Period.

cthulu7, where the heck do you get your "information?" i have personally worked at a zoo and have much exprience with animal breeding programs.

Captive bred animals are not allowed to be released into the wild. Period.

well that is a complete load of crap. i have witnessed and observed the process of the breeding program here at my local zoo for red wolves. the babies were born at the zoo. they were not allowed to be named or be interacted with. food was thrown in their cage and was eventually live food. 3 out of 7 were successfully released into the wild and all three are still alive to this day. the other four were sent to zoos in the aza breeding program that is specifically for breeding and sometimes releasing endangered species.

Almost NO demand is out there for captive bred octopus's

this is also untrue. those of us in the scientific realm, especially high school and college students doing research on octopi, are in need of captive breed octopi. it took me over a month to find a local store that sells captive bred octopi and it takes them at least a week to get it since the breeder is abuot 10hrs away by car. all the other stores just get a local fisherman or diver to catch them one, and it is often too tiny for research projects.

you don't know everything and you are not better than anyone, so stop acting like it. there's enough forum bullies out on the net, we dont need one here.

Well, it is not a "load of crap". Check your facts. The wolves that were released in Arizona...how many are still alive...hmmm. How about the wonderful Thick Billed Parrot program? They made great food for the Apache Goshawks. Desert Pupfish, Black Footed Ferret...shall I go on?

I also have worked in the zoo sector for decades. So what. Many of us here on the boards have.

Check with your local fishstore or dealer/wholesaler. All of the one's I spoke to had little to NO interest in buying or even accepting captive bred octopus.

No, I don't think I am "better" than anyone else, but I am allowed to have my opinion, and it is backed up by a lot of years in dealing with the public, and with the animals themselves.

Greg

Well, it is not a "load of crap". Check your facts. The wolves that were released in Arizona...how many are still alive...hmmm. How about the wonderful Thick Billed Parrot program? They made great food for the Apache Goshawks. Desert Pupfish, Black Footed Ferret...shall I go on?


Greg

Well, to be fair,at least part of the problems with the survival rates of the Mexican gray wolves released in Az is poaching or poisoning by local ranchers. That's true for the Timber wolves up north too. Also, when the border patrol really tightened the border in El Paso and San Diego, smugglers, etc. started moving into a lot of the area where the wolves were released, followed of course, by the border patrol. All that human activity had a huge impact on the wolves, and when they build that expensive and probably worthless fence, it's going to further impact the wolves as well as jaguars, ocelots, jaquarundis, pumas, etc....
All the extra human activity along the border has also severely impacted the endangered long nose bat, and probably a lot of other species that I'm just not aware of.

Exactly my point. Wildlife re-introduction hardly ever works, because the niche has been either taken over, or is reduced.
Many of you are going to point to the success of the Peregrine Falcon re-introduction plan. It was indeed marginally successful, but most of the birds now gracing our skies are from wild stock. Thank god for pidgeons, I suppose...of course, they do carry West Nile, don't they? Most of the captive animals find their way into other zoos or breeding centers, and yes, it is wonderful to believe that all of this work results in the glorious achievements made by homo sapiens.

Any competent field biologist will tell you that once an animal is removed from the wild, it is genetically considered "dead".

When you release a captive animal into a wild situation, you compromise the delicate balance that ALREADY exists in that area. If you release bimacs, for instance, into an area that already supports O.bimaculatus...what are the wild ones going to do? There is only so much food or shelter available...and nature has a way of making that work.

It's never nice to fool with Mother Nature.

In general it is not a good idea to release captive raised animals to the wild. There are some situations where it has been done with some success such as some fisheries (salmon, trout, large mouth bass, red snapper etc.) there is still a debate on how much it helps or hurts the natural population and if the animals released survive. However, there has been indications that ut has been successful. One instance of great success in particular is the kemp's ridley sea turtle program where wild eggs where collected and raised to a curtain age and released. People should never release cative animals into the wild unless they aer permitted to do so. How many newly introduced species are there because someone released a aqurium fish into the wild (i.e lionfish on the east coast for example, caulerpa algae in california, hawaii and florida).

...or the bullfrogs in southwestern arizona that wiped out the local frog species, the cichlids that have killed off the pupfish, brown tree snakes eating the rare Hawaiian birds...the list goes on and on and on.

It does not work. It can't. Lifestreams adjust quickly to compensate for changes in the local flora and fauna...when we attempt to re-introduce a new animal, or even one that has been exterminated from an area, we upset the rythym. We are not gods, and should not pretend that we know more than the wildlife structure itself, as fragile as it may appear to be.

It can work to a point. As I said the Kemp's ridley sea turtle is a good expample, and I can give lots of facts to back it up, also Bald Eagle, White Sea Bass, the list can go on. To make a broad statement that there is no way any of them can work is absurd.

If you want to see an example of people not knowing what they are doing, check out the following website........

http://www.wildlifesciencecenter.org/WolfManagement.html

It can work to a point. As I said the Kemp's ridley sea turtle is a good expample, and I can give lots of facts to back it up, also Bald Eagle, White Sea Bass, the list can go on. To make a broad statement that there is no way any of them can work is absurd.

Good Heaven's! Sorceress, I wonder how much each of those meetings cost us? :shock:

MBG: it is not at all absurd. You are basing your experience in three unproven relocation/redistribution efforts. The bald eagle was never in any imminent danger, but was used to railroad many companies. Ever been to Alaska?
The white sea bass is now considered a "pest" fish, with almost no limits on catch, as it has denuded local fish to the point of extermination.
I can make a far longer list of failures than you can of success's. As far as the sea turtle goes, wasn't the point of that to avoid predation upon the juveniles? Not re-introduction or impression ?

Check your facts.

greg

Off topic, I know, but most peregrines gracing our skies right now are from captive stocks through the Peregrine Fund, Tom Cade, and a plethora of peregrine breeders who had been producing falcons for falconry. I have worked with the Raptor Center in MN and they can trace the lineage of the majority of breeding peregrines back to captive stocks through their pedigree system. Sorry just my pet project being and veterinarian and falconer.

The California Condors of the Grand Canyon...

http://www.whoopingcrane.com

Some of the comments made in this thread really left a bad taste in my mouth. Is it really that hard to be civil in this debate? I can feel some passion on this topic, just try to keep it kind so no one is turned off.

Off topic, I know, but most peregrines gracing our skies right now are from captive stocks through the Peregrine Fund, Tom Cade, and a plethora of peregrine breeders who had been producing falcons for falconry. I have worked with the Raptor Center in MN and they can trace the lineage of the majority of breeding peregrines back to captive stocks through their pedigree system. Sorry just my pet project being and veterinarian and falconer.

I am also a class 3 falconer, and certainly the efforts of the early breedings had an impact upon the wild introduction. Now we have Peregrines where they never existed before, too...guess those Prairie Falcons will just have to find prey somewhere else, hmmm?

http://www.whoopingcrane.com

Interesting side note: there are two places in the world where you can legally kill sandhill cranes...the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Way to go U.S. !!!!

The California Condors of the Grand Canyon...


Check their status. It is a great PR job...but, a failure all in all. Even the cranes have an impact on the local ecological damage. Yes, we as human beings have managed to screw up many an animal species role in the natural habitat. The problem is, when you try to fix something that has already been repaired, you are making further glitches. Why did the condor become near extinct? Was it due to human intervention. No.
The cranes are a sad story, as is the demise of the passenger pidgeon, and hundreds of species per year. Captive breeding is not the answer, wildlife management of a responsible nature is. We need to stop screwing around with everything, including collecting octopus.

Some of the comments made in this thread really left a bad taste in my mouth. Is it really that hard to be civil in this debate? I can feel some passion on this topic, just try to keep it kind so no one is turned off.
Thanks Fini -- we've discussed this a bit as staff. I believe strongly that alignment is key -- there are some frustrations coming through with a "soft spot" in our forum moderation and we'll address by year's end.

Collectively, I am confident I can speak for staff when I say we are staunchly in support of open discussion and self-regulation within the community -- however, we believe we can do more to define the framework of our beliefs when it comes to responsible ceph keeping.

I agree, Fini, the tone in this thread and perhaps one or two others is a bit of a downer and is not at all in the spirit of TONMO.com. Again, I feel an overall weak spot has been exploited a bit and I intend to ensure it gets addressed by way of a clearer statement of purpose and a better articulation of our collective philosophy on cephs and ceph care.

Thanks for everyone's patience!

when it comes to captive bred and then released animals, what i was talking about was solely those released for environmental purposes. believe me, there are enough problems from idiots releasing pets where i live. ive seen enough python vs gator or python killing pet dog stories on the local news to make you sick. its tiring.

but we also have a very good community when it comes to lack of poaching and a respect of wildlife when u go farther up into central florida, which is where the wolves I was talking about were released. i know it does not work for all animals, but it does work for some and it is worth the effort for some species, dependant on the species and the surrounding environment.

there are also those species whose natural habitat has been ruined so badly that there are no longer any wild animals of that kind, all that are left are the captive bred ones. and they cannot be released, not becaese they were captive bred, but necause they literally have no home in their natural habitats.

what makes this type of argument so heated is when it no longer is a debate. you cannot debate something when using the words "always" and "never" and the likes of them. i am still in school and i know this. if you are going to state an opinion, do it right. and if you are going to do it without seeming to have an ego, you might want to check how you are writing your opinions.

I may not be a legal "adult" yet, but I have learned this much from school.

I may not be a legal "adult" yet, but I have learned this much from school.

Its not about how old you are, but how old you act :smile:

Its not about how old you are, but how old you act :smile:

LOL...ouch !

Actually, I feel quite comfortable with saying always and never...the facts back me up 100%. People have pointed to supposedly successful programs, the major problem is that we declare victory when after a year or two, the animals may have survived. Will they provide a sustainable breeding population? No. Never. Programs like this are done to garner money for the more important issues, such as actual wildlife management...controls of take, habitat preservation, etc. That is where we should be spending our time and resources.

Back to the case in point, no, I do not feel that most of the people who keep cephalopods in captivity are correct in doing so. The posts that started this debate were in relation to releasing captive bred octopus into their natural habitat, which I do believe was accurately pointed out to be completely wrong. We can't go tromping around the balance in the wild, all the while shouting at the top of our lungs just what great good we are doing by undertaking such programs as "captive breeding".

Never, as always. :smile:

Well, one thing we can always say about you Cthulhu77, you're never wishy-washy. We always know where you stand! :mrgreen:

LOL...ouch !

Wasn't a jab at you, Greg--I could never say that about someone with their own Gato class submarine! :)

wow... and how old are you acting?? maybe i just wont come back to this site anymore, you guys sure don't like to hear other people's opinions or anything. i was taught to not use words such as never or always when talking in a debate, that was stating what i was told and shown, sorry the public school system isnt good enough for you. and the wolves i have been talking about were released about 4yrs ago now, and they are continually monitered. nothing can ever be proven "fact" until it has been through its full process. if you look into the scientific process, there is rarely "fact," things are changing all the time. also, how can you judge a program you have never seen or read up on?

i have agreed with you all along about the octopus being released part. that just doesnt work, its just like people here releasing pythons or red eared sliders and such.

if you have nothing better to say than something that makes your ego go up, then perhaps this site is not what i thought it was, especially if you are "staff."

thanks for the downpour.

if this site does not improve i will definately not be back, nor will any future octopus studying peers that i come across. i have gotten much better response, help, and respect from my lfs.

Norge, I was complementing you and making a jab at some of the youngsters on the board who don't act quite as mature. I apologize if I could have been a bit more clear.

Dan

Well this has all gotten pretty ugly and not worthwhile, so I'm locking this thread, and will include the note I posted yesterday on this...

Thanks again; let's move on.

Thanks Fini -- we've discussed this a bit as staff. I believe strongly that alignment is key -- there are some frustrations coming through with a "soft spot" in our forum moderation and we'll address by year's end.

Collectively, I am confident I can speak for staff when I say we are staunchly in support of open discussion and self-regulation within the community -- however, we believe we can do more to define the framework of our beliefs when it comes to responsible ceph keeping.

I agree, Fini, the tone in this thread and perhaps one or two others is a bit of a downer and is not at all in the spirit of TONMO.com. Again, I feel an overall weak spot has been exploited a bit and I intend to ensure it gets addressed by way of a clearer statement of purpose and a better articulation of our collective philosophy on cephs and ceph care.

Thanks for everyone's patience!