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Roy Caldwell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California at Berkeley, first met the Octopus chierchiae, also called the small Pacific striped octopus, in Panama in the mid-1970s. He was pulling rocks from the ocean to find the praying mantis shrimp hiding in the cracks. “Every once in a while, this cute little striped octopus pops up,” he said.
He brought some of the octopuses back to Berkeley. “One of the females laid an egg, and I thought it was a bit of a bummer because I knew she was going to die,” said Dr. caldwell “And he didn’t die.” A few months later she laid eggs again.
A 1984 paper Arcadio Rodaniche, a Panamanian scientist, Dr. He confirmed Caldwell’s observation: females of this species, unlike almost all other octopuses, can reproduce several times.
This feature, combined with their convenient size, has made them an attractive subject for laboratory research. Unfortunately, Dr. Caldwell couldn’t find more in Panama. Neither of the biologists or collectors he asked had seen it.
Until 2010, the little cephalopod was just a memory, “I got an email from a high school student,” he said. The student sent a photo. The zebra stripes of the octopus were prominent.
Dr. Caldwell tracked the octopus to a collector in Nicaragua. Eventually, he may get a few small Pacific striped octopuses and attempt to establish a colony in his laboratory. However, after three or four years of trials, it never passed the second generation. After that, Dr. Caldwell said the females’ eggs did not hatch. He suspected that diet as well as inbreeding was an issue. “We didn’t know exactly what to feed them.”
In 2016, Dr. That question was still unanswered when Rosenthal came to the Marine Biology Laboratory with the dream of making the cephalopod model to aid scientific research. Known as a cephalopod whisperer, he recruited Mr. Grasse from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Taylor Sakmar, also a Monterey Bay aquarist, came to Cape Cod to help build a new breed of facility for multi-armed animals.
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