NEW FACTS ABOUT THE OCTOPUS

Evening Star, Issue 21689, 7 April 1934, Page 5

NEW FACTS ABOUT THE OCTOPUS

There arc few more terrifying inhabitants of land or sea than the octopus. This weird creature has been described in poetry and prose from the time of Homer. Dr Boulenger, curator of the delightful aquarium in .the London Zoo, has been calling attention to some recent investigations into its habits. The octopus is a mollusc, a cousin of the snail in our garden and the shellfish on our shores, but with its power of rapid movement, its fierceness, and its carnivorous habits it is dreaded by almost every other creature of the deep. Unlike other molluscs, the octopus has good eyesight, and the fact that its eye, which in giant species is over a foot wide, is never closed increases its terrifying appearance. Its eight arms, sometimes more than 40ft long, are covered with formidable suckers which give them a tremendous grip on their prey. The octopus is cunning and has a remarkable memory. A French lady, Jeannette Power, saw one in her aquarium holding a stone as it watched a. seawing open its fan-like shells. Immediately the mollusc had opened them wide the octopus inserted the stone between the valves, thus preventing the seawing from clapping them together again. _ Then it proceeded to devour its victim at leisure.

The curator of an aquarium at Jersey kept many an octopus in large wire enclosures under natural conditions in deep rock pulleys. He saw one deliberately kill a rockfish, place it where it would attract passing crabs, and then hide itself in its lair to await the approach of its favourite food. When a crab approached it unrolled an arm and caught its victim by tbe tip of a tentacle. The most recent information about the octopus to which Dr Boulanger calls attention comes from Australia, where two scientists have been observing their courtship and incubation habits in a tank. The eggs are fertilised by one of the arms of the octopus, which separates from its body and lives independently. When the eggs, dark brown in colour were laid they were hung separately on the wall of the tank, looking like' long, narrow bean pods. There they hung for a month, with the mother sitting with her hack to them, her long arras turned over them, while she ejected from her syphon pipe, normally used in swimming, a continual stream of fresh water over them, first from one side and then from the other. At the endi of a month out popped the baby octopods, little miniatures of their parents, able to fend for themselves. Their mother, exhaiisted bv her devoted task, collapsed and died. It is not yet definitely known whether the mother always dies at the end of the period of incubation or whether the abnormal conditions in an aquarium were the cause in this case,

but this care for the young is quite remarkable.