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Octopus opening jar tricks

Octavarium

Wonderpus
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Feb 9, 2008
Messages
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Location
East Haven,CT
My guy eagerly eats snails, hermits, crabs, and shrimp and scallops on a stick. I figured since hes so enthusiastic about eating when I approach the tank, I'd try the old closed lid on jar trick. Whats the best way going about this, and if any of your octos perform this...how long did it take them to be successful?
 
Olorin got it first try,although I didn't put the lid on tight at all.actually second try,the first time he bumped the glass and gave up.Check out Olorin and the mayo jar in journals and photos.
 
I would go for plastic rather than glass and I don't know if baby food jar lids are still metal but even if they are now plastic, they are likely too difficult to open (I am not even sure they screw on any more). Carol used one of those clear snap apart plastic "eggs" and Kraft mayonaise has an lid on their rectangular "jar" that snaps open and is all plastic that could be interesting.
 
I am currently using 10 oz. glass mason jars, with some "aftermarket" inert plastic lids I bought separately. You can tighten the lids completely with 1/2 turn, or you can use a string and torque the tightness specifically during the early phases (to make it easier for them to figure it out).
 
Ringo the octo

Hi,

I've been working on trying to figure out what was best to use as well. I am a college student performing a training experiment with my octo Ringo. Unfortunately he has stage fright, so right now we are working with trying to get him more used to people. I recently added chromis which seem to help, but we've only had him a little over 2 weeks. I think the egg idea sounds great, because we were looking at film canisters and didn't know what had previously been inside them.
 
Well Ive had success so far with a baby food jar cleaned out with crab. The lid isnt put on all the way, and he can quickly pop it off now. After a few more trys Im goign to fully tighten it and see if he has any luck. I'll be sure to video it. Yantigg, what specices is your octo?
 
We used all kinds of containers for my octos. Everything from simple boxes with lids that just slid off, to twist-open jars. Sometimes took 'em a while but they eventually got it.
 
I've been feeding my GPO (presently about 2 ft. TL) live shrimp and crabs and finally decided to try the old jar trick. I put a coonstripe shrimp in a 7 liter plastic observation container that I'd gotten earlier from Acorn Naturalists that has a snap on lid, which takes a bit of effort to pop open. I'd just fed the octopus another coonstripe about twenty minutes earlier, so I wasn't sure that it would even be interested. The container lid had trapped a bit of air in the container so it floated around in the tank for 5-10. The octopus eyed it a few times and touched the container rather tentatively without seeming interest. Then all of a sudden, wham, it grabbed the container, straddled it, evidently popped open the lid by sucking on with its suckers, and then checked out the shrimp with one of its arms. After that the action was hidden from view by the octopus's webbing. I had other duties to attend to but when I retrieved the container an hour later, no shrimp and the lid had been wrenched out of its hinges, so the suction must have been pretty strong. The largest suckers on the animal are about 1/2 inch in diameter and it grips very well when I clean the tank and it "wrestles" me.

That was the first time I had put any food in any container, but it didn't require any learning time at all - just wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Pretty amazing.
 
This comment apparently got some attention and Nancy invited me to share more, so I've started a new thread on Henry the Alaskan octopus in the journals and photos sub-forum. Not being real computer literate when it comes to photos, videos, etc. it might be awhile before I can get any posted, but I'll try. The tank is a 70 gallon, measuring 56" x 18" x 16" (I just re-checked my measurements and found that I erred in the first description as 90 gallons). It's connected to our visitor center's aquarium recirculation system, that includes about 20% makeup of raw filtered seawater. I would love to have a larger tank, but that's the largest one I have, except for the 5,000 gallon tank. If I put it there, it would eat up all my crabs and in turn get eaten by one of the larger fish, probably the lingcod. So I'll have to slow down on the fresh crabs and shrimp in its diet, I think.
 

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