Enteroctopus dofleini and enrichment (not my octopus)

[neurobadger]

I volunteer at an aquarium.

We have a small female Giant Pacific Octopus and I'm not sure how often she should be enriched - she doesn't appear to have any frequently in her tank whenever I'm there (twice a week, Monday and Friday). She spends a lot of time in one corner of the tank and occasionally gets up and moves around the tank - she looks bored and I worry about her.

I occasionally park myself near her tank - is there anything I can do outside the tank to make her life a little less boring? Because I know anything I say or do probably won't have much impact on how often the staff enrich her.

 

[vanilla.exe]

At the aquarium I volunteer at, they have 3 clear plexi boxes, small, medium and large. The boxes are all placed within one another with a crab in the smallest box. There are levers on the boxes that the GPO has to figure out how to manipulate to get the crab. I'm not sure how often they do it though, I'm in freshwater primarily. I did once get to play with the old male though =3 that was fun.

 

[DWhatley]

You might try coming in early or leaving a little late (whichever time has fewer people at her tank) and spending 15 minutes or so standing there and "scratching" the glass in one particular spot to see if she will start interacting with you. I recommend consistency of timing and location at first until you start seeing her acknowledging your intent, then you can think about making the interaction a little more challenging. I believe that ours must get behind the scenes attention because she came to me after only a couple of minutes but this seems to be a motion that is easily acknowledged since she had never seen me before.