Octopus living in groups and more stuff

**jugglematt** · Aug 17, '10, 3:41pm

Someone has suggested striped pygama squid/cuttlefish . similar egg case

http://www.deepseaimages.com/dsilibr...php?photo=9656

thanks for the suggestions
ill keep an eye on them
Matt

**DWhatley** · Aug 17, '10, 3:52pm

Those sure look identical! The trouble I had with the broadclub egg in Paradox's picture is that it seemed to have a "point" where your's don't show one.

Are you going to try to monitor them to get us a cool video of them hatching or at least some hatchlings?

**jugglematt** · Aug 18, '10, 3:43am

i will definitely monitor the eggs , im only able to visit every week or so , depending on conditions

so i will be very lucky to capture a hatching . but ill be able to monitor their sdevelopment

Thanks for the information Guys

**jugglematt** · Aug 23, '10, 3:11am

so i had a guy come down to look at the octopus site who is doing a paper on Occys . . he sais the Group living so close together is quite unique , and is not aware of it anywhere else.

so has anyone herd of any other cases of octopus living together in groups?
ive counted 12 at its peak, now there are about 5 living closley , some within 800mm

regards
matt

**DWhatley** · Aug 23, '10, 5:42am

Matt,
I suspect it happens more often than is recorded and that some of the literature is written with little in situ observation (or fail to identify individuals correctly, thus counting two or more as one animal). The Florida O. mercatoris dwarfs are often found in cultured live rock brought in from a single farming area. I don't have an immediate link to the study but one European researcher placed piece of pipe in an open area in an attempt to study O. vulgaris and had 75% occupancy in a matter of days. Hopefully Mucktopus will visit and see the post and give a distance approximation of the group she observed (A.aculeatus) while doing her doctorial work.

**jugglematt** · Aug 29, '10, 6:14am

Hello all
an octopus update , we went back to the occy site today , not much to report , but the eggs seem to have gone , not sure if they have hatched or been eaten .

had a really cool encounter with an occy at another nearby site ,
my buddy found an occy living in a hole which happily played with a torch , after a while i came over and the occy climed on my camera , and played with it for a while , after that he climbed onto my hand , grabbed on and started swimming out into the open dragging me along !!!!, he had hold of me sucking on and swimming me along and also sort of walking himself along the bottom , this went on fro about 4/5 mins he was happy to hold onto me pulling along with a fair amount of force , he then took me to his occy den and pulled my hand inside his den and kept hold !!!

how cool , i then tried the RUB between the eyes trick , and he seemed to like it , he sort of wiggled his tentacles and just let me rub his forehead for another 2 mins

and my buddy got video with my camera, 12 mins in all, ill trim it down to 2 or 3 mins and post it on youtube ,
v cool creature .

so whats the reasoning behind the occy taking me for a swim?

is this behavior seen commonly????

video to come soon
Matty

**DWhatley** · Aug 29, '10, 2:22pm

Can't wait for the video!!!!

**jugglematt** · Aug 31, '10, 11:49am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv8Ll_41LPA

here it is

**DWhatley** · Aug 31, '10, 12:49pm

It stopped at 1:31 in the lower resolution but changing to the higher resoultion let me see all of it. I would have liked to have seen the whole thing but that might have taken two days to upload (they do a have a large file upload that restarts

).

**CaptFish** · Aug 31, '10, 1:01pm

Worked fine for me. but that has happened to me with other videos, just try again later.

Great video I can almost hear the octopus talking...."My human!...Mine...get back you darn fish, this ones mine!....come on you.... Now get in here, come on....OK now..massage please...oh yeah a little to the left...oh yeah...."

**Cerulean** · Aug 31, '10, 1:02pm

Matt, there is a study going on in Capri where they hypothesize the octopus are living in groups and learning from each generation's life experiences. It's groundbreaking stuff. I saw it on a documentary on the Science channel called Underwater Aliens.

**jugglematt** · Sep 01, '10, 6:40am

as i said the whole video is about 12mins and my internet connection is quite slow down here .

im sure the occy in this video is visited by divers frequently , its a very common dive site , the occy also looked a bit damaged with one tentacle almost and some bark off.

the idea that there are other group living occys is news to me , ill have to search for the docco
thanks
Matty

**tonmo** · Sep 01, '10, 7:00am

Matty, LMK if you want to send me the DVD of the video (and any other footage) and I'd post it on TONMO for you.

I'm starting to look at the YouTube API to see if there's something we can do to integrate.

**Lmecher** · Nov 02, '10, 8:24am

This thread is amazing! Your interaction with these sweet gentle octopuses confirms just why we love them so. Thank you so much for sharing your expereinces. Keep them comming.

**SabrinaR** · Nov 02, '10, 11:13am

Originally Posted by Lmecher

This thread is amazing! Your interaction with these sweet gentle octopuses confirms just why we love them so. Thank you so much for sharing your expereinces. Keep them comming.

No kidding just fantastic... Thank you for sharing.

**jugglematt** · Nov 07, '10, 2:27pm

thanks folks
well we went out again on the weekend , numbers of occys are building on the Midden site , and the dominant occy is more bold and up to his old tricks.

he took a shine to my buddys spare regulator and tried to take it from him,grabing on and pulling reallly hard , i think the shiny crome was the thing , the occy pulled and pulled and draged it into his home ,after some real effort , ( this guy is strong !) my buddy managed to get it back but with lots of tugging .

the dominalt occy also took my yellow torch that i offered to him for a look , then we couldent get it back , he put his whole body over it , only by distracting him with another offering could we get it back ,
he played with my diversafety sausage , my brass clips , and came right out of his hole very curious , not at all scared , he sort of let me hold him and sort of lift him up .

very cool dive , and shows that these octopus are moody , and sometimes they are keen to play and interact and other times they are not in the mood .

Regards
Matty

**DWhatley** · Nov 07, '10, 2:37pm

Some of the thievery antics reported with the larger octos always makes me think of the tales about dragons and their hording of treasure and I have wondered if middens are more than just a garbage pile and humans just don't recognized the contents as having value.

**DWhatley** · Nov 10, '10, 7:57pm

Matt,
Perchance have you talked with Peter Godfrey-Smith about your octo group? This is from an article in the Harvard Gazette:

He also has explored the idea that octopuses — thought to be solitary creatures — may interact socially. During his dives, he has seen two octopuses living just two feet apart for more than a week in Sydney Harbour and has visited a diver down the coast who has found a group of octopuses living together and interacting.

If not, one of us should send him a link to this thread. There is a reference in the article to his Havard home page that contains an email address.

**jugglematt** · Nov 11, '10, 2:52am

Hi , and thanks for the link
yep i have had a chat with peter
and he actually came down to the local site and did some dives , i think he was hoping to revisit the site when he next came to Australia.

attached are a few pics of the octopus at the midden recently .
i took some things along this time to see if the occys would play some more .

first i presented a glass bottle filled with sand(to stop float away) with the top plugged with some grass.
the dominant occy really liked it , took it , put his body completely over it , later he could be seen , he had removed the grass from the top and had a tentacle inside and was playing about .

i also to a couple of stones ( nah not interested)
and a small orange plastic cylinder , played a bit but lost interest .

photos to follow
Regards
Matty

**DWhatley** · Nov 11, '10, 4:06am

Matty,
Should you talk with him again, Haggs did a little impromptude experimentation with bringing and swapping treasures as well and you might mention the thread if he wants an additional place to experiement.

Very cool to see some unofficial, official attention to the subject. I've been paying a lot more attention to the arms since reading the article.