The guards should have known. Inky had just been biding his time, planning patiently. And then he scurried down a sewer pipe late at night, to freedom!
If I’d been guarding him, I would have been suspicious of that poster of Ursula from The Little Mermaid that he’d requested, too, and would have regularly checked behind it.
Ethics anyone? Does this mean that octopi should be give more freedom, or at least more entertainment?
Inky was a spy. He is now taking all this information about humans back to HQ; the invasion is imminent. I sure hope they treated Inky well!
I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man(topus)’s shoes?
On the other hand, there’s, like, 8 of them.
I’m curious. I presume that an octopus’s olfactory organ would only work under water. The smell of the ocean emanating from the sewer pipe would have to get into the tank’s water, which would, I imagine, severely dilute it. The source of the odour would also be masked.
How could the octopus possibly know that the pipe was a conduit to the ocean/ May be it got out of the tank to go exploring, but would it be able to smell air-born molecules?
I thought intelligence was only measured by IQ tests.
Thinking about it, (after hitting the ‘Post’ tag), maybe it’s not so improbable that they can smell air-born molecules?
…scurried down the sewer pipe to freedom…
Or maybe got eaten by rats.
Sounds like a story they cobbled together just to make their next grant request a little more interesting.
My first comparison thought was that it was like the end of Finding Nemo when they all managed to plop into the ocean.
I heard a story when I was a kid about an octopus at the Hatfield Marine Science Center that supposedly escaped its tank and tried to open the back door of the aquarium one night. I have no way of verifying that- the story was told to me way back when I was a kid as something that had happened “years ago.”
I saw this octopus the last time I was in Napier.
Seemed perfectly happy then…
I’m with rq… thinking that was all a ruse in order to gather intell.
When I was a grad student, I had several aquaria I was using for research at the California Academy of Sciences, so I spent a lot of time with the guys who ran the departments there.
One time when I was working there, one of them asked me if I had been raiding the other aquariums for specimens for my research.
*scratches head*
“uh… no.”
so, they set up some cameras to keep watch at night.
turns out one of their large pacific octopus was removing the lid from its tank… leaving and crossing the floor into the OTHER tanks… nabbing a few fish and eating them… then returning to its own tank… and PUT THE LID BACK ON.
not kidding.
Ichthyic
I was going to say that I sure am glad they don’t survive to raise their young, but I suppose there’s nothing stopping non-related, knowledgeable adults (like Inky) teaching the offspring of other octopoda.
“They’ll never notice a fish or two, it’s not like they’re intelligent.”
For some reason this makes me immensely happy. I needed that.
Ichthyic @ 11
And now that I’ve read the comments yours makes me even happier, that’s amazing.