A few months ago my father emailed me to tell me about his new pet. In New Jersey, he tried to literally bring the ocean into our house. He kept all sorts of salt water fish, starfish, shrimp, and sea horses in huge tanks that took up the length of our living room wall. Now in Greece, he’d apparently fished an octopus out of the ocean.
Over the course of several weeks, he emailed me stories about his pet octopus’ silly antics. It was a curious octopus, always watching him. One day, though, the octopus grew despondent. No amount of feta cheese improved his happiness. My father decided it was time to release him back into the ocean.
Now you may remember that my father lives in the Peloponnesus in Greece, near where the Greek poet Arion, who sang and danced for the gods, was rescued by a pod dolphins after being kidnapped by pirates.
Currently, the Ionian Dolphin Project is studying dolphins of the non-mythological variety in a different region of Greece, the island of Kalamos. Catalan biologist Joan Gonzalvo reported on the blog that he recently witnessed an octopus attach itself on top of a, um, rather sensitive, private area of a bottlenose dolphin. With the octopus still attached, the dolphin leapt out of the sea, and the scientists got some awesome photographs.
Speaking of Catalan, don’t forget to check out the Human Tower events happening throughout New York.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 