BY BOSCO CELESTINE
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Even after death, the popularity of Paul Octopus ,who shot to fame during this World Cup Soccer in South Africa has not diminished.
So many powerful Presidents and Prime Ministers have died but failed to find space in news papers and electronic channels the world over as Paul’s demise in an aquarium in Germany.
“Paul amazed the world by correctly predicting the winners of all Germany’s world cup clashes, then of the final” says Sea Life Manager Stefan Porwoll.
Paul is immortalized. “We may decide to give Paul his own small burial plot within our grounds and erect a modest permanent shrine” promised Porwoll.
“While this may seem a curious thing to do for a sea creature, Paul achieved popularity during his short life that may deemed most appropriate course of action” he says.
General perceptions are that Octopus is a slimy, repulsive creature with frightening tentacles.
How many of us know that Octopus is an intelligent mammal. Daniel Fey, Spokesman of the Weymouth, Sea Life Park in Dorset in England where Paul was born says that anybody could recognize Paul’s intelligence. “There was something about the way he looked at visitors when they close to the tank”
Ms Fiona Smith also from the same Park says “Octopuses are very intelligent with that of a dog. The love problem solving and figuring things out”.
At the same time, the Octopus has earned the reputation of a killer. This reputation was probably initiated by Victor Hugo’s hair raising description in his “Toilers of the Sea” (he gave the impression that an Octopus would swallow a human being like a human being swallows an Oyster.)
Victor Hugo goes on write that since then, there has been a general idea that any diver, in a suit or not, unfortunate enough to meet an Octopus will never be seen again.
Those eight deadly arms, each armed with a double row of suckers, will twine around him in an embrace from which there is no escape. Octopus beak will then be inserted and the diver will be eaten, or at any rate sucked dry. What a horrible death.
The female of the species is more deadlier than the male is true to every sense of the word to Octopuses.
Unlike human kind or animals, Octopus are not known to have close contact while having sex.
The Day Octopus has a mating ritual that involves the male signaling his intent to the female by waving his modified third right arm. He also darkens his skin colour and slowly approaches the mate. If the female responds positively the male inseminates the female by releasing sperm into her oviduct.
This commonly done at arms length because the female has known to eat the male after copulation. The female lays literally thousand of eggs and attaches them to the coral inside her lair. When the eggs hatch the youngsters feed on select food till they mature into adults.
The life expectancy of blue-ringed octopus is only about two years because both the male and the female die after copulation. During copulation, the male climbs onto the female’s back and inserts his hectocotylus, or modified arm, under the female’s arm where he releases his sperm into he oviduct. At this point male octopus dies.
Mother love is the last thing one would expect in an octopus, yet it will brood over its eggs and keep water gently circulating round them. A female in an aquarium refused all food while guarding eggs. Indeed, she was annoyed when food was given and always threw it away.
When the young hatched she displayed the same devotion but not much intelligence, for she continued to refuse food until she dies of starvation, a pitiful sacrifice for a few empty egg-shells.