Holes in mantle

[perke]

Hey all,

Was wondering if anyone has ever seen octopus with missing parts in the outerlayer of their mantle i.e holes where you can see white muscle underneath. I recently did a tour of the aquariums in the north of England and saw two aquariums where their octo's had this particular problem. One was a GPO another a common octopus. Neither seemed to be showing signs of autophagy and the loss of skin only seemed to be limited to the mantle.

I thought orginally it could be due to sharp structures in the tank but then they didn't look like it and there were no structures. Also thought it might be due to poor diet, stress or possibly a bacterial infection. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Jean]

Hi Kerry,

I've really only seen it as butt burn, I would guess maybe an injury followed by an infection, were these older animals do you know? I've noticed that the older the animal gets the less able it is to repair skin with chromatophores etc so you get a lesion with no pigmentation, which often looks puckered, like it's eroded.

J

 

[perke]

They could be older animals, one was a GPO the other a Common they possibly were older, however my little girl here isn't showing similar signs and she's getting on a bit so... It definitely looked like a lesion rather than damaged chromatophores the mantle did look erroded. The GPO had it at the very tip so possibly was butt burn as you put it. The other looked like somebody had taken a hole punch to it and that's what concerned me it was a considerable amount of damage for it to be just abrasion. Thanks for your input though looks like nobody else has any ideas

 

[Jean]

perhaps ran into something spiky? Scarring never seems to regrow chromatophores.

J