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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't want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be studying that, not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it's cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I'm serious.

Give the cepheid a laser and let him work it out himself.

Just make sure there are no internet connected keyboards nearby.

That might be something that you would want to try in a research aquarium, but sadly a lot of aquariums are more for human entertainment, than for study and preservation of species.

Hah, I mean, we weren't a research aquarium, and this was ten years ago, but calling the local university wouldn't have been a terrible idea.

he broke back into his own tank after

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?

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.

I guess you could say the same for Humans we too have dens or homes, and often return to them after an adventure.

You're lucky all he wanted was to eat a flounder and then return peacefully to his tank instead of going full Dawn of the Planet of the Octopuses on you.

Day of the tentacle is more appropriate in this case.

thanks for clearing that up

I'm also a veteran of working at an aquarium and have heard this story before. Is it something you witnessed? I've wondered where this story came from:

- http://belizeadventure.com/2013/08/octopus-facts/

- https://www.tonmo.com/threads/midnight-tank-escapes-fact-or-...

Edit: this is not to call you out for you story, it's very possible that this happened at CHS aquarium, I'm just wondering the origins since it's such a fascinating and strange story.

I heard this story in three different marine biology labs going back to the 1980s (prey type differed depending on location). All were "it happened a few years ago", it was "caught on camera back then" and no actual eyewitnesses who could attest to seeing the film.

Then again, I've also had to clean up a couple (witnessed) octopus escapes, though not with the full "got out, got prey, got back in." So they are at least somewhat prone to roaming.

Woah, wild. Well, in my case, I don't have the video footage because this was 10 years ago, so yup this falls right into the same hearsay category as those two.

I would guess that Octopi just tend to do this. They really are smart and can fit through crazy small spaces.

This reminds me of one of my favorite chainsawsuit comics - http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2013/08/29/the-cephalopod-gamb...

> Obviously if we came in one day to see an octopus in the flounder tank the mystery would be solved day 1.

It's hard not to speculate that the octopus had a sufficiently sophisticated model of its keepers in relation to itself (which implies self-consciousness) that it knew this.

I can come up with other theories (some territorial affinity, perhaps), and I'm sure people have. I wonder which have been tested/explored...

I would love to see that footage. I've seen videos of them solving simple problems, but I've never seen them go all MacGyver. The way their described makes me think of our local raccoons, shifty, conniving and sort of belligerent. You have to respect their audacity and resolve.

> I would love to see that footage.

Different footage but a similar crazy feat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPJaPZCwZo4

Ha! I'd say it deserves the occasional fancy meal from that.

I hope you at least deliver him flounder now, from time to time.

> amazing aquarium, go check it out

Is it OK to feel sad about the aquarium based on this story?

Sounds like the octopus from Finding Dory!

Perfect setup for Octopusnado

Pedantic mode here: linguistically it should be octopodes (but nobody who isn't speaking Greek would say that); by usage it should be octopuses; octopi or octopii are just wrong (it's not a second declension noun, despite the 'us' ending)

I basically agree with you, but this also reflects where you are on the prescriptivist/descriptivist split.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Etymology_and_pluraliz...

Anyway, while I wouldn't put it like you have, I agree with the bottom line -- spread the message of "octopuses"!

According to James Bond it should be octopussies (or is it octopussys?).

You just can't win with grammar Nazis. If they'd written octopuses, someone would be in here telling them "It's octopi".

> grammar nazis

I think you mean "spelling nazis". ;)

Linguistically this is known as reanalysis.

Octopus has three acceptable pluralizations in English.

  Octopuses is correct by English rules.
  Octopodes is correct by strict etymological Greek-origin rules.
  Octopi is correct by English's pseudo-Latin cognate rules.

The latter means that any singular noun ending in a consonant and "-us" can be pluralized by chopping off the "-us" and appending an "-i" or "-ii", like alumnus, hippopotamus, virus, bacillus, hummus, lotus, oculus, cactus, and platypus. This has even been abused to facetiously pluralize similar-sounding endings, like Elvis or Winklevoss.

This is likely due to the many Anglophone schoolchildren subjected to Latin language lessons over the centuries who simply never cared about proper Latin grammar rules.

I don't know, could it also be because what became England was pretty romanised before the Saxon influence began in earnest?

Well the word Octopus was invented from the whole cloth by Linnaeus, presumably inspired by applying the prefix for eight, to the Ancient Greek work for an octopus which was "polypous"

Except there is no single authority of the English language (as seen in other language academies). As I mentioned in another comment, you may fall into a prescriptivist or descriptivist camp, but there's no authority to which one can appeal for a single answer.

Generally speaking, octopuses is preferred by most if not all well known dictionaries in modern usage, and the pseudo-Latin cognate has fallen out of favor. I don't think it's reflective of reality to argue that all three are equivalently correct.

The style guides to most scientific journals will assert "octopuses", so you're unlikely to get "octopi" past that collective editorial authority, in any case - the others are however deemed acceptable alternates in common use.

... most scientific journals will assert "octopuses" ...

I saw a lecture by Peter Godfrey-Smith, the author of the book in TFA, and he also comes down on the side of "octopuses".

Neither the prescriptivists nor the descriptivists are correct.

There is, in fact, a way to assume greater authority over the English language than the power wielded by the median speaker. The person who can inject a memorable phrase into the popular culture--whether by writing a line that is read by many, or by speaking one that is heard by many--can steer the language closer to the path they may prefer.

For all our quibbling over technical correctness, if an author or scriptwriter decides to keep "octopi" alive, all they have to do is write it, with no explanation or justification necessary.

Stam that in your rassoodock and let it digimmer. It could make you frumious or mimsy, but you will grok who the lords of language are.

The goal of descriptivists is to collect information about how words are being used currently and to compile a dictionary based on that information, so what you said about viral memes is compatible with descriptivism.

The best argument for prescriptivism has less to do with authority and more to do with people who have an interest in being able to communicate clearly. A better word than "prescriptivism" might be "subscriptivism". Presumably, we subscribe to the normal rules of the English language so that we mitigate miscommunication.

Purpose matters. The person who demands that everyone use "octopuses" is just an elitist asshole. The science institution, which demands that its members conform to a precise standard of language, is just doing its job.

A cromulent point indeed!

Honestly, as a native english speaker who is usually a nazi in spelling, grammar and pronunciation - octopi sounds most intuitively "correct" to me. Octopuses sounds awkward and inconsistent with idiomatic English, like a non-native speaker might guess at. Octopodes sounds like a scientific term.

As far as I'm concerned octopi is correct. Screw the etymology.

AFAIK (I'm not a native speaker), English language has short and long words. Short words are native, long words are foreign. It's because long words in other languages are composed: short root, and suffix(es) to make proper form. English language uses other rules, so remnants of foreign languages are not welcome, but foreign languages are associated with wisdom, so longer words are associated with wisdom and science too. Can you confirm that?

http://writing-skills.com/does-word-length-matter

It's always difficult to produce hard and fast rules with English. But there are often two words (or stems) for things, one from the Germanic roots and one from Latin (either via Norman French, or from later scientific etc. addition) which leads us to see with our visual system. The older Germanic words tend to be for more commonplace vocabulary, whereas the Latin tends to be for more formal or technical usage (YMMV). But because the inputs to English are mostly indo-European these two roots are sometimes similar anyway.

It's more than difficult - it's impossible. The number of exceptions to every supposed rule in English is ridiculous. There is no way to learn the language except by absorption and rote.

That's sort of why I support octopi. It is predictable, idiomatic and consistent. You shouldn't have to research the origins of a word in order to pluralise it.

English follows other languages into dark alleys, beats them senseless, then rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.

The various irregular forms and tenses of the existential verb, "to be", is etymologically stitched together from at least three distinct languages.

Remnants of foreign languages certainly are welcome, though they certainly get rough treatment in comparison to their language of origin. The majority of the whole corpus is "foreign", and a significant fraction of the 1000 most commonly used "core words" are from a different branch of the linguistic tree as the official branch for English.

This is, in large part, due to the Saxon and Norman invasions.

Pseudo-Greco-Latin words are associated with higher education, because for a long time, Latin was required for higher education at English-speaking universities. Thanks to the fact that such words can be composited from a variety of common Greek and Latin roots, it remains the etymological origin of choice for newly-coined words describing new scientific knowledge. English, of course, tosses their grammar onto the tire fire, and chops up the vocabulary like a butcher disassembles a side of beef.

Length is likely just a side effect of the etymological origins.

Octopie is a baked dish with eight lobes.

In the parking lot near my house, there are a bunch of Toyota Priuses that park in one corner. We've started calling them Prii.

why do robots group together in the dark?

Not quite:

https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk (Octopus - Merriam-Webster Ask the Editor)

Nobody who's speaking Greek would say that either, as it's ancient Greek. Today, we say "octapodia", or, colloquially, "ctapodia".