Wonderpus - Fontanelle

[Jean]

NICE!!! Real abstract look!

J

 

[Thales]

Digs again!



Thanks Jean!

I walked into the ceph room just now and caught him dug in to the corner of the tank in the miracle mud. He has been digging in the corner and about 2 inches away from the corner. Spif!

 

[Michael Blue]

Thanks for sharing! He's awsome!

 

[Thales]

I just caught him about 4 inches above the substrate with 2 or 3 arms still slowly digging in the substrate. I got a couple of pics, but am too tired to process them right now.

You know, every time he does something different, I worry he is heading towards senescence.

 

[Thales]

And here is the digging/emerging pic as well as a swimming pic that shows the head nicely.

 

[Thales]

I dropped some fishing lures into his tank for the wunderpus to play with. They float, but he did have some interest in them for a day or two. Since they float, they ended up near the intake of the hang on back overflow. I don't know if this had anything to do with him not making his den behind the overflow anymore, but the timing matches up. The upshot is, Fontanelle is not staying on the other side of the tank during the day, plastered up on the glass or in the corner or digging. Earlier in the thread I posted some pics of him 'sleeping' on the class where you see him from underneath, but I was able to get some of him on the side glass so we can see what he looks like when he is sleeping.

The first shot shows the dark mantle coloration with the arms being lighter in color.
The second is just neat.
The third shows the light color evenly over all of the skin.

More often than not, I see the dark mantle and light arms when he is 'sleeping'.

 

[DrBatty]

so gorgeous....

 

[Thales]

so gorgeous....

Thanks! You should come by and check him out. I am in Alameda. Shoot me a pm if you are interested.

 

[Thales]

I caught him digging and pulling substrate over to his new den area. Pretty neat stuff. I set up the video, but haven't had time to look at the footage yet.

Here is a sequence of pics showing changing color while he is partially dug in. They were taken within 20 seconds of each other.

 

[Thales]

Here is a shot of him dug in from the side of the tank.

 

[Thales]

And now, he is back in his old 'den' behind the HOB overflow.

 

[Thales]

Finally!

After 3 or 4 weeks trying to get video of the 'pounce' I finally got it.
I walked into the ceph room and saw him looking out from under the HOB overflow, so I figured he was looking for food. I dropped a shrimp in and he went for it. Great! He hardly ever seems to take food head on, preferring to kind of wiggle arms around towards it, grabbing it gently but having a firm grip before the prey knows its been caught. There were actually two shrimp in the tank at the time, so you can see him do the arm catch later in the vid.
If only I could have gotten to the tripod!
The whole thing took about 6 minutes, so the video is a cut down version of events.

The link:
Wonderpus

 

[Jean]

Fantastic...........those stripes make it all look so surreal!!!

J

 

[Michael Blue]

WOW! Beautiful!

 

[jhemdal]

Thales,

Our mimic finally died, about six weeks after laying infertile eggs. Not bad - Five months, 14 days in our tank for an animal acquired as a young adult.
We have a Wunderpus now. My first take at contrasting the differences between the two species is that while the Wunderpus has much more vivid coloration (when excited) the mimic has scads more personality (re: behavoirs). I tried to run my ethogram on the Wunderpus, and it doesn't even do most of the behavoirs that I had listed for the mimic. I will say that the Wunderpus accepted food right away, and is a real chow hound compared to the mimic who didn't feed well at first.

Jay