classroom octopus

[Dr. Idso]

Greetings,

This is my third attempt to post this message...so I hope it works! For the past five months, we have been keeping an octopus in my 5th grade classroom in a 20-gallon aquarium. I let my top scoring science kids feed it by hand twice a week as an academic award. You'd be surprised how my kid's science scores have improved. Anyways, the octopus shares its domain with a Mexican gulf opaleye, about two dozen hermit crabs, and two dozen turbo snails. In all this time, the octopus has never eaten or attacked any of its tank mates. When we initially received the octopus from Florida, it was missing parts of three arms, which have since completely grown back. I was wondering if our octopus is a vulgaris? Any inputs? It's mantle is the size of a ping-pong ball and has a tentacle span of about 10 inches. I will try to post a few pictures of the ceph, now that we have the digital video recorder up and working. The kids love the octopus!

[Rudiger]

Do you know who/where in florida the octopus came from? What you described sounds pretty small, i think a 5+ month old vulgaris would be bigger than that but im not sure. It could be a dwarf species but then I would think it would most likely be nocturnal and it sounds like if your students are feeding it then it is day active. My 2 cents.

pat

[OctoMonkey]

We need some more pics of your octo to try and see what it is......

Try for a clear shot of the mantle, eyes and arms too. That will help a lot!

Wish my old biology teacher had a ceph in the class.......

Colin

[cephalopoder]

Uou have had the octopus for five months?. My bets are briareus from looks of the webbing. Vulgaris would be nice too:D How lond did the aams take to grow back?
chris

[Dr. Idso]

Hello,

The octopus was collected in the Florida "Keys." We had the ceph for about 3 months before each of its three tentacles were grown back completely. The tentacles were not totally missing, but each of the three were missing about half of their lengths. We have noticed that although the octopus and gulf opaleye do not necessarily fight, the octopus does curl the ends of its tentacles inwards so the opaleye does not have a chance to nibble at their frail and skinny tips. I have attached another picture of the ceph, which just took a crawdad from one of my kids. I go on vacation tomorrow for a month, but will put up some better pictures from videos when I return. My top "junior scientist" (Pink) has taken home the aquarium and is required to care for the octopus the entire summer to help develop her leadership and responsibility skills (wow, imagine that terrible summer assignment, I bet you wish your teacher forced you to do something that terrible!!!).

Best Regards,

[CalvinC4S]

Very cool looking Octo! Can't wait to see the top side.

[OctoMonkey]

Yep cool octo!

Well, hard to tell without seeing the mantle but those webs are very distinctive and the suckers are very big. Let me rule out briareus as that is nothing like what mine looked like from looking at your recent picture.

Could be vulgaris but I have never seen one close up so I cant be 100% sure. Cyanea also has huge webs but it's not from Florida.....

C