<story><title>Just how smart is an octopus?</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/just-how-smart-is-an-octopus/2017/01/06/a2f1ed22-acd0-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>komali2</author><text>Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus&amp;#x27;d, climbing over the walls, breaking into the flounder tank, eating a flounder, and then &lt;i&gt;breaking back out of the flounder tank and back into his&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The weird thing isn&amp;#x27;t that he went to go eat a flounder, it&amp;#x27;s that he broke back into his own tank after, leaving us scratching our head for weeks over where the flounder were going. Obviously if we came in one day to see an octopus in the flounder tank the mystery would be solved day 1.&lt;p&gt;Anyway we put carpet on the walls so his little suckers couldn&amp;#x27;t stick and let him carouse around the aquarium like some sort of aquatic monkey.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Presumably he (or she?) wanted to go back to his own tank to get the regular food. Frankly I think you should take the carpet down - OK you don&amp;#x27;t want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be &lt;i&gt;studying that&lt;/i&gt;, not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it&amp;#x27;s cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I&amp;#x27;m serious.</text></comment>
<story><title>Just how smart is an octopus?</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/just-how-smart-is-an-octopus/2017/01/06/a2f1ed22-acd0-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>komali2</author><text>Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus&amp;#x27;d, climbing over the walls, breaking into the flounder tank, eating a flounder, and then &lt;i&gt;breaking back out of the flounder tank and back into his&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The weird thing isn&amp;#x27;t that he went to go eat a flounder, it&amp;#x27;s that he broke back into his own tank after, leaving us scratching our head for weeks over where the flounder were going. Obviously if we came in one day to see an octopus in the flounder tank the mystery would be solved day 1.&lt;p&gt;Anyway we put carpet on the walls so his little suckers couldn&amp;#x27;t stick and let him carouse around the aquarium like some sort of aquatic monkey.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rgbrenner</author><text>&lt;i&gt;he broke back into his own tank after&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Octopus have dens that they only leave to eat and mate. they always return to their den after, and they only move every few weeks. So wouldnt that be normal behavior?&lt;p&gt;I guess he could have moved his den to the flounder tank.. but maybe he just found out where it was, and caught him before he decided where to move to. or maybe there was something about the flounder tank that made it difficult to find a good spot.</text></comment>