Kooah - O.briareus

DWhatley

Kraken
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Cape Coral, FL
I received an email this weekend that Kara had come across an octo while out collecting (www.sealifeinc.net) so she captured it for me. KaySoh is still with me but is listless and very weak so we know the end is near but I don't have a spare tank for a new one. Knowing KaySoh will not move about and that the new one will stay hidden for a week or two, we improvised and built a barrier on both sides of the crossover tubes using opaque plastic pegboard and zip ties.

I have not gotten a good look at this one yet but my guess is about midlife, maybe slightly older than SueNami when he came. The arms are quite thick but length and sex are yet to be determined. I offered a piece of shrimp while she (for now) was acclimating but there was no interest.

Like most other acclimating briareus, she did not leave the container for over an hour. She did show signs of exploring though by putting her suckers through some of the holes and either "sniffing" the water or touching the live rock. at one point she put the tip of an arm through, wiggled it around but then quickly withdrew it in favor putting just the larger suckers through the hole. You can see a sucker pad being shed and another drifting in the water near by in the second photo.

The name is one given to the collector when she babysat as a teen. The young child could not say Kara so it came out Kooah.
 

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I just (1:00 AM) went downstairs to see if she had come out. The tank has no night lighting and when I turned on the red flashlight she was out on the back wall but I never saw an octopus move so fast. She was back down into the rock before I could get any kind of look at her. I tried a piece of shrimp on a stick to see if she might be tempted to take some food but she showed no interest. I did notice that I could not find the fiddler that was on her side of the tank though.
 

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It is hard not to be very optomistic about this one. Tonight he was out just after 11:00 PM and decided that I was not too scary so he came to the front and let me "pet" him through the glass. After an hour of wandering the glass with my finger he went to the back and I played with Puddles. He was out again and did not spook when I went to the tank and took a couple of flash pictures. After my eyes started to readjust, he came back out and directly to the corner where I was stroking the glass.

I am switching to "he". During part of his exploration, I noticed the third arm to the right curled :biggrin2:, then I noticed that the first and second arm were also curled :hmm:. Just at that moment, he curled the ends of both the first and second arms to the left (for no apparent reason):lol:. It did look like one arm had enlarged suckers but I am hoping for some daylight time soon to get a better look.

The photos don't show it well but his mantle looks small for the thickness of his arms at the webbing. The arms are of varying lengths and all but one have noticable new growth (my guess is two months worth). He is showing a lot of curiosity and has interacted in one night more than Creepy and KaySoh combined. I just hope this excessive speed to interact is not the beginning of senescence. We will see what he remembers tomorrow.:biggrin2:
 

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Congrats Di!!! I'm jealous! I used to love having 2 octopuses in the house....maybe time to figure out where I could place another tank!! :smile:
 
Very cool, I like the tank a lot, too! I wonder how much interaction you might get if you took one of the pegboards away so that they could get next to each other and reach some arms through. When I had the two dying off from temperature shock in my tank, they perked up when they saw each other and became a bit aggressive. I wonder if some exposure to another octopus might cause some feeding response.
 
davelin315;151922 said:
Very cool, I like the tank a lot, too! I wonder how much interaction you might get if you took one of the pegboards away so that they could get next to each other and reach some arms through. When I had the two dying off from temperature shock in my tank, they perked up when they saw each other and became a bit aggressive. I wonder if some exposure to another octopus might cause some feeding response.

Briareus are know to be particularly aggressive and cannibalistic. The most likely result would be a battle resulting in the death of at least one animal.
 
In the beginning Legs was also unaffected by the camera and the flash, It actually seemed like she enjoyed it. Maybe this is common among Briareus. It could also have to do with there poor eye sight. I snapped a pic of Legs a week or so ago and it did seem to bother her she flinch and was scared back to her den.
 
This little guy is sooo exceptional! He was a little slow to come out tonight (we put Creepy's red light on the tank so that may have been part of the reason) but Neal did get to see a little of him. Eventually, he really started showing off and doing some remarkable things with his arms (bending and straightening them like a whip, rotating them on the glass using his suckers in strange movement) and molding his body to the LR and sand. I sat and watched him for close to two hours. He did not come up to me like yesterday but was aware of my presence as I sat on the couch in front of the tank and walked my fingers around. He was startled a couple of time and showed that impossibly fast fluid movement I saw yesterday.

I finally got up to feed Puddles (across the room) and when I turned around he was on the wall in the center of the tank and moved to the upper corner where we played yesterday when I approached the tank. I knew it was too early for touching but could not resist the offer. He accepted a finger on his mantle as he slowly slid along the tank and showed no signs of fear when his arms slid through my fingers UNTIL the tips of his arms touched my hand. Not until then did he make sucker contact and was using these new tips (as mentioned earlier all arms have about 2 months replacement growth) to explore my fingers and the webbing between them. Something did not taste right or he realized I was touching him because he inked and disappeared into the LR.

I checked on him a couple of times and about 4:30 AM he poked his head out and was curious again so I am hoping we are go for more advernture tomorrow. This one is definitely turing out to be special.
 

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