Enteroctopus dofleini — a giant Pacific Octopus is headed to Washington National Zoo. Its claim to fame is that it will grow 13 times its present size over the next year. Sadly, it won’t be black and white like the little panda who recently left for his new home in China. The zoo hopes to ignite excitement over invertebrates which make up more than 95% of the animal kingdom.
Alan Peters, the Zoo’s curator of invertebrates calls it the “giant panda” of invertebrates. Here are some giant Octopus facts from Yahoo News:
Now for some octopus facts: They emerge from eggs only a little larger than a grain of rice, but as adults they can tip the scales at more than 100 pounds. Some have arm spans of 25 feet (be glad you’re not sitting across the table from one.)
The Zoo’s new octopus doesn’t yet have a name. That will come in March. Zoo officials think it’s a he, but aren’t 100 percent certain.
According to Wikipedia:
The North Pacific Giant Octopus is considered to be short-lived for an animal its size, with life spans that average only 3-5 years in the wild. To make up for its relatively short life span, the octopus is extremely prolific. It can lay up to 100,000 eggs which are intensively cared for by the females. Hatchlings are about the size of a grain of rice, and only a very few survive to adulthood.
During reproduction, the male octopus deposits a spermatophore (or sperm packet) more than 1 meter long. Large spermatophores are characteristic of octopuses in this genus.[4]
Is it possible for an invertebrate to attract the same kinds of crowds as little Tai Shan did? Is it possible to get attached to an invertibrate the same as one does a mammal? Do octopus even have personalities? Is keeping an invertibrate the same as keeping a mammal in captivity? How do our contributors feel about this youngster who is coming to live at the National Zoo?
