What’s the Hold Up?
AKA
Is the New Dude a Dud?
Our old Giant Pacific Octopus “The Dude” was pretty smart and had no issues opening jars. Our new member of the family is not quite as motivated.
We’ve been in the process of naming our new Giant Pacific Octopus for some time. We got all of the name submissions, voted them down to the top 8.
Showed the Octopus how to open jars and practiced.
“See Octopus?! This is how you open jars!”
We waited until we thought the time was right.
We’re ready, but is the octopus?
On July 4th we thought he was ready. We made the announcement, gathered a crowd, and watched anxiously as our aquarist Dan lowered two jars into the octopus habitat. There was an initial flurry of excitement as the octopus went after the jars. Which one was he going to choose? The tension was palpable.
“I want BOTH of them”
This lasted for all of 30 seconds until the Octopus, bored with the task, turned his attention to all of the people looking at him.
“Why hello everybody! YES, I am very handsome”
We tried several more times, bringing the jars to the surface and showing the octopus again how to open the jars to get the delicious crabs.
Yum!
We took the lids off of the jars, and still…nothing.
After a few hours of keeping a close eye on the situation to see what crab he’d go for first, we abandoned our post. We felt a little defeated, and one Oceaneer suggested that we had a faulty octopus.
The sneaky octopus took this opportunity to eat both of the crabs.
On July 11th we tried again and we are pleased to announce….
He POUNCED on Jar B. He wanted those names to make it to next level in a big way. Moving on to the next round are:
Octopus Prime, Steve, Armstrong & Arm-ando
We’re going to try again on Friday to narrow it down to the top two! If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that Octopuses can be not only smart but stubborn as well. For more information on the contest check out http://www.oceandiscovery.ca/octopusname
