Teaching an octopus new tricks....

Davinci

Cuttlefish
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Aug 18, 2010
Messages
18
Hi Everyone I like to know if anyone has any experience on teaching your pet octos tricks such as opening jars and etc... I like to teach my octo some tricks but he doesn't seen to respond to anything I add to the tank. Please help.

Please list.
Your octo specie:
What kind of trick:
How you taught the trick to your octo:
 
You'll be the first that I know of.

Only trick i ever saw was when you put food in the tank the octopus makes it disappear. :roflmao:
I played 'games' like Hide-n-seek, but I did not train the octopus she trained me. She would hide then I would find her with a flashlight, then she would come out, and repeat.
 
Hi and welcome to the site!

This seems to be your first post, and you have an octopus, so we'd like to add it to the List of Our Octopuses. Could you please tell us its name, the species, and where you got it?

Yes, a few of our octopuses have done tricks, but not all octopuses are interested in games or jar opening.

As far as opening a jar, you start by putting a piece of food (such as a small crab or piece of shrimp) in a jar and just place the lid on top - don't screw it on at all. Keep doing this each day, and very gradually begin to screw the top on. Your octopus will figure out how to open the barely screwed on jar lid, and then slowly learn to open the jar.

Pull the stick is often the first game they play.

Nancy
 
Then I hope its not a bimac! they are a cold water species, more like 60 degree water. Since it is still alive it is likely a Hummelincki, or Caribbean two spot octopus. We have seen a few of these show up lately, it must be there time of the year. To amke sure of may it is you mat want to call your LFS and ask where it came from. Also we have not seen Bimacs for sale in quite a while now, the few members that have them caught their own.
 
As Nancy mentions, leaning to get into a jar has been done by several of us. We don't "teach" the "trick" but some will decide to figure it out where others just ignore the difficult food and wait for easy offerings, mine lost interest after the first few successes. I don't think anyone on the site has attempted a maze or symbol recognition but many of us have learned to interact with our animals (more rewarding than symbol recognition unless you are doing a study). CaptFish and LMecher have had ample opportunities to describe the water cannon abilities (again, not something we teach) with Penny and el Diablo. Other octos will squit keepers on occassion but these two have decided to make it part of their interaction routine. We tend to find them interesting enough with their own antics and don't worry much about inventing things for them to do :biggrin2:

Here is a photo I marked up for helping to identify an O. hummelincki but this species has some anomolies.
 
I'm a bit surprised by this thread, I thought teaching tricks was par for the course :smile:

I have been thinking for a while what tricks an octopus could potentially be taught, but I will say that as soon as I have an octopus that is happy and comfortable I will be building mazes and symbol games for it :P
 
Octopuses have often been compared to cats. Where I would disagree with this as an intelligence comparison, there is a similarity in that octos do what they want when they want and are not consistent in their behavior :biggrin2:.
 

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