Hundreds of dewdrops to g r H u n d re d s o f b e e s i n t h e e e t t h e d a w n , purple clover, ...
70
EIGHT (ARMS) IS ENOUGH Meet The Wetlands Institute’s New Resident By Executive Director Lenore Tedesco and Devin Griffiths of The Wetlands Institute
W
hat has eight arms, can change colors at will, and is both a master puzzle-solver and expert escape artist? The common octopus, of course! Octopus vulgaris – as the species is known in scientific circles – is one of the more fascinating residents of our local waters. Despite its name, people rarely see octopuses in their native environment, and most know very little about these incredible creatures: “Common” refers to their distribution rather than your chances of encountering one. It might surprise you that we have common octopuses living nearby, but it is a cosmopolitan species, found throughout the world’s oceans in tropical and temperate zones – including right here in coastal New Jersey. About the only place you won’t find one is in the Earth’s exceptionally frigid polar and subpolar waters (and who can blame them?). Octopuses are remarkable, and the newest resident in our Secrets of the Salt Marsh aquarium provides a unique opportunity for visitors to watch one in action and learn all about these amazing creatures. Octopus mythology and symbolism are abundant through history. The most familiar is the Kraken – a
legendary sea monster that was the bane of seafarers around the world, dragging ships and their crews down to the inky depths. The Kraken has been a mainstay in popular culture for years and continues to appear in literature and movies. It is a fixture in Scandinavian and Norse mythology, but its roots are far older, harkening back to the ancient Greek creature Scylla. Scylla was a six-headed beast who lived across a narrow strait from the maelstrom Charybdis; together they posed an inescapable maritime hazard, forcing sailors passing through the strait to make a perilous choice. To this day, being “caught between Scylla and Charybdis” implies having to choose between the lesser of two evils. And you can thank Greek mythology if you’ve ever been “between a rock and a hard place.” Fortunately, the common octopus is far too small to be a sea monster. It varies in length from about 12 inches to 3 feet (other species not found locally can be much larger) – much smaller than the ship-swallowing beasts of myth. Ours at The Wetlands Institute is about a foot long, and still growing. All that growth is fueled by a strict seafood diet. In the wild, they prefer to feast on crabs, clams, and mussels, but will eat
virtually anything they can catch. (We feed ours a mix of local seafood items collected right out of the marsh here at the Institute, which he consumes with gusto!) They crush shells with their hard “beaks,” and catch prey in powerful webbed arms lined with double rows of suction-cup-like suckers. These suckers have super-sticky surfaces to help grasp prey; in order to keep them sticky, octopuses shed the lining of their suckers periodically. Once they have captured their prey, they can paralyze it with a nerve poison present in their saliva. In addition to their signature arms, octopuses are equipped with a host of fascinating features. The most obvious is their bulbous head (or mantle), but they also have three hearts; their blood is copper-based, not iron; and they can absorb oxygen through their skin. And octopuses can force water through their mantles to produce jet propulsion to get around – or to squirt an unsuspecting Aquarist. (Ask ours how she knows this!) Water isn’t the only substance an octopus can squirt, though. These creatures are adept at protecting themselves from predators, and have a remarkable suite of defenses. When threatened, they can squirt a cloud of ink continued on page 72
Seven Mile Times Spring 2023
s e ve nm ile t im e s .c o m