Inky, an octopus, lifted himself out of his tank at the NZ National Aquarium through a gap in the lid, suckered his way across the floor, and squeezed his football-sized but highly malleable body into a six-inch drain pipe that led out to the ocean, whereupon he disappeared. (Measurements and sports analogies translated from Kiwi to American).
Apparently the gap in the tank lid was overlooked because it was covered by a poster of the Little Mermaid. Inky had been doing taxes for the Aquarium’s director and guards, who are under investigation. Rumor has it that his tankmate will eventually be joining him off of a small seaside town in Mexico.
But on the other hand who among us hasn’t had a craving for some Calamari working late at the office, then told the boss “yeah I guess he escaped somewhere, like that pipe, yeah that must be it”
Well, I’m sure the cold-blooded fiendishly clever alien creature with the sucker-studded tentacles and razor-sharp beak that escaped from its tank by crawling across an expanse of dry land and then squeezing itself through a six-inch-wide pipe has simply swum off to enjoy its renewed freedom somewhere in the vast watery depths of the Pacific Ocean, and is definitely not lurking about somewhere in the vicinity of Napier, NZ, plotting revenge upon its erstwhile captors.
Aquarium staff searched the pipe and found no trace. Who knows if that means they peaked in the end of the pipe, ran a scope through the entire length, or something in between. But octopuses can get through ridiculously small holes, so 6 inches is no problem for them.
The remaining octopus is named “Blotchy”, so you’re probably not far off.
ace, they are apparently quite compressible and can get through nearly any space large enough for the beak. This suggests that MEBuckner may be right about some Kiwis getting a visit up through their toilets.
Well, but his Twitter handle was H0rnyBeakD0wnUndr.
One article mentions that this happened three months ago and is only now being made public. To me, this suggests that they found a keeper’s desiccated body behind the tank at the time, and it took a while to hush that up.
Assuming the drain goes more or less directly to the ocean as reported, then bully for the octopus. But aren’t the odds fairly decent it leads instead to, like, a sewer and possibly a treatment plant? In which case Inky would be in a world of shit. The touch of a human hand is said to be very uncomfortable for them (burns), I can’t imagine what it would be like for them to be completely coated in muck.
I’ve heard octopodes are about as smart as cats. But cats and people are both terrestrial, mammalian chordates with a common ancestor at some point, and probably think similarly about stuff like solving problems. Incidents like this make me wonder what the thought process is like for a very smart mollusk. Which would still be closer to the thought process of a human than that of an alien. I don’t think much further than that because I start getting sleepy and looking for the Oreos.
I would love to see a cat (or human) do anything close to this. The only thing I can conclude is that they are wizards. Escape artistry is just one of their many tricks.