The "my hand is an octopus" trick

**Joe-Ceph** · Feb 11, '10, 2:20pm

I've noticed, with both of the bimac's that I've kept, that if they are watching me from within their den, I can lure them out by using my hand to mimic the motions of an octopus. I do this from my side of the glass, not in the water. First I make my hand "jet propel" across the front of the tank, with my wrist leading, and my fingers trailing behind. My fingers start splayed apart, and then when I bring them quickly together, my bent wrist moves quickly forward about a foot. I repeat that a couple of times and my hand comes to rest on my knee, where it starts crawling, like an octopus, up my body, across my face, and then stops on top of my head. This always gets my bimac's attention, and he usually comes out to investigate.

Does anybody else do this?

**DWhatley** · Feb 11, '10, 5:19pm

VIDEO demonstration REQUIRED

**MAKOOKAM** · Feb 18, '10, 1:38pm

Originally Posted by dwhatley

VIDEO demonstration REQUIRED

heheheh... :)

**rryyddeerr** · May 19, '10, 12:36pm

totally need to see this.

**Nancy** · May 19, '10, 1:11pm

I did something similar at a pubic aquarium, where I used a small octopus plushy toy and made it move like an octopus. It worked, got the attention of a young GPO.

Nancy

**hermissenda** · May 25, '10, 1:52am

You can do the 'my hand is a cuttlefish' trick as well, just hold your hand up with your fingers close together and the thumb tucked under...it doesn't seem to stress them out, but you often get some communicative color play from them. Fun!

**Joe-Ceph** · May 25, '10, 11:53am

Has anybody tried a life-sized toy octopus (or cuttle fish)? If my hand gets a response, I'll bet that would get a bigger response. If I get really mad-scientist, maybe I'll try to make a hand puppet our of a rubber toy octopus (no offense to any of you real scientists who may have done this as part of your vital contribution to human knowledge

)

**CaptFish** · May 25, '10, 12:04pm

I have a stuffed octopus that i held up to the tank with Leg's, She seemed interested but no more so than when she played with my hand on the glass.

**Tamara** · Jun 30, '11, 8:18am

In the wild cuttlefish tend to respond really well to that game, I can often get them to come quite close. Although every time I've tried the game with a cuttlefish smaller then my hand the cuttlefish has gone white and tried to hide itself.

**skywindsurfer** · Jun 30, '11, 8:25am

I saw a video where a dive tricked a cuttlefish into thinking a toy lobster/prawn was real and got the animal to exhibit hunting behavior.

**ceph** · Jul 25, '11, 7:51pm

Try pretty much anything appropriately sized and move it so the octopus can see it.

**tonmo** · Jul 25, '11, 8:41pm

In the wild cuttlefish tend to respond really well to that game, I can often get them to come quite close. Although every time I've tried the game with a cuttlefish smaller then my hand the cuttlefish has gone white and tried to hide itself.

Mark "Monty" Montague spent some time giving it a whirl... I can't recall which aquarium this was at?