FAQ
A contribution of The Cephalopod Page
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Dr. Roy Caldwell, chair of the Biology Department of U. C. Berkeley, posted the following information about the dangers of keeping blue-ringed octopuses. Unfortunately many people, including some pet store employees, are not aware of how dangerous these beautiful animals are.
I feel that I should make a few comments about the wisdom of keeping blue-rings for pets. DON'T! Why not? 1. They can kill you. Many years ago in Thailand I saw a German tourist killed by apparently placing a blue-ring on his shoulder. The tetrodotoxin can stop an adult human's breathing in two to three minutes and unless ventilation can be established and maintained for up to several hours, the victim will die. I have read many of the medical reports of bites in Australia and while many of the victims recover and may even go home the next day, others do not. At my university, to study H. lunulata, I must keep them in a secure, locked aquarium room with warning signs stating that the animals are potentially lethal and that under no circumstance should they be handled. I and my students are allowed to work with them only if two people both trained in CPR are in the room. This is not hype. A female carrying eggs will sometimes attack and bite, often without even displaying her blue rings. They simply fold back the arms and web, point the mouth towards the intruder, and display the beak. 2. Liability. So perhaps you are expert at handling octopus and will be super careful. However, you won't always be standing guard over your tank. Remember that tourist that I mentioned above - or perhaps the scene in 'Ring of Fire' where one of the brothers was handling a cute little brown octopus -- small, short-armed octopus are appealing and not frightening to many people - especially children. It only takes a second for a finger to poke the octopus and for the octopus to fight back. In fact, the bite is reported to be relatively painless, you might not even know that anything is wrong until it is too late. Most of us would not leave a 'cloth of gold' cone in a tank without lots of precautions. A blue-ring is worse. 3. They are not very interesting as pets. While there are at least a half dozen species and I have worked primarily with H. lunulata, the most common species shipped from the Philippines, my experience studying the behavior of these animals is that they spend much of their time clinging to the side of the tank or hanging in algae. They rarely live more than a few months and shipping mortality is very high. Mating behavior is interesting in that the male mounts the female and may ride on the female for several hours, but keeping two together in a small tank can also lead to one less octopus. Larger females will often kill the smaller males. Also, we generally had to use live food (crabs) which was sometimes difficult to get. 4. Conservation. Most blue-rings collected for shipment die. The few that make it to the retail store often will not survive much longer. While I am not against sane marketing of some live invertebrates and fish, I am concerned when so few animals make it from reef to tank. The blue-rings on a grass flat or rubble reef can be easily collected out in a few weeks. Enough small boys looking long enough will find most of them - and while I have not heard of a collector being bitten, it worries me. A few people have been successful raising large-egged species of blue-rings, but with small-egged species like the H. lunulata, rearing is very difficult. We have tried for four years and have yet to get a single juvenile through. It is highly unlikely that these animals will ever be cultured for commercial gain. So, if you have to have an octopus, pick one of the pygmy species that do well in captivity and pass on the blue-ring. They are not worth the risk. Roy Caldwell |
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| There is more info at:
http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/bluering1.html Dr. James Wood |