4/7/07
Holy Cow. I happened to come home late, and when I walked into the ceph room, Fontanelle saw me and reacted with this crazy pose. I supposed I scared him by breaking his routine. I haven't seen this pose since the first weeks and feel a little sad because I think it is a 'scared' display, but thrilled I was able to take some pics of it.
I'll be adding this to the thread from time to time. Its from an upcoming article I am writing and I think it reflects concerns about wunderpus pretty well:
The size of wunderpus populations in the wild is unknown, and it is unclear what effect their collection will have on those populations. Little is known about what they need to survive in the wild, and even less is known about what they need to live well in the aquarium. After much wrestling with this issue, I urge even experienced ceph-keepers to think long and hard before bringing one into the home aquarium. Many cephalopod enthusiasts feel that the wunderpus shouldn’t even be collected for the trade at least until more scientific research has been done on the species. I only accepted responsibility for Fontanelle because, by serendipity, I was able to obtain a healthy animal before it was tanked at an importer, at a time when I had a mature, ceph-ready aquarium available.