
DATE: Friday, November 28, 1997             TAG: 9711280066

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONI GUAGENTI, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   86 lines

TWISTING TASK TESTS TALENT, TACTICS OF OCTOPUSES

Like a parachutist descending upon a target, the octopus floats with precision onto a rounded jar with a black lid.

Its puffed-up body envelopes the container, while its eight tentacles wave gracefully, groping for whatever it can touch, mostly the glass of its aquarium at the Virginia Marine Science Museum.

Its muscles flex; its eyes bulge.

Within three minutes, the lid has been unscrewed and the much-anticipated meal of shrimp and crab meat is underneath the octopus' body, ready to be devoured in the crevice of one of the aquarium's rocks, where the animal transports it.

``She's done,'' says Tracy Harmon, the creature's proud tutor. ``Good girl.''

Harmon, an exhibits technician at the museum, has been working for several weeks to unlock evidence of the gangly-armed animal's mental abilities.

She has succeeded in training all three of the half-pound, 18-inch invertebrates to unscrew the lids off their food jars.

``They can actually think and figure things out,'' she says.

In this facility's undersea world, opening a jar to get at the prize inside is like an octopus' Rubik's Cube. It keeps its mind pumping.

``They need to not be bored,'' Harmon says.

The creatures - dubbed simply No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 - possess a high level of intelligence, with personalities to boot. Each approaches the circus-like trick in its own way.

Conditioning the octopuses to open the jars happened in stages.

First, lidless jar containing food was dropped into the tank.

Then, a loose lid was placed on the jar. The octopuses had to knock it off to get to the food. Gradually, the lid was tightened - until the octopuses figured out that, to get to the food, they had to unscrew the lid.

Because octopuses are solitary, territorial creatures, the museum's trio occupy separate tanks, only one of which is on display to museum patrons. All of the octopuses are six months old and of the two-spotted Pacific Ocean variety, which tend to live longer in captivity, Harmon says.

It took one female octopus three weeks to figure out how to unscrew the lid. The male figured it out in one day after watching that female. The other female took about a week.

No. 3, the other female, is the showoff of the bunch.

It got the lid off in less than a minute, but held the jar and the lid with the suction cups closest to its mouth, which is underneath its body, where the eight tentacles meet.

``They can grab like we can,'' says Deb Perry, a museum spokeswoman watching the octopus work.

No. 3 slithers around the glass to display its catch.

The octopus' trademark blue-black dot, which inspired the species' nameblinks on and off, indicating the creature is excited, Harmon says.

``She's really putting on a show,'' Harmon adds. ``This one is so personable. Every time you go up to her, she reaches out to you.''

The white octopus rolls the jar around with its suction cups. It inserts one tentacle into the jar coiled like a loop and feels the food. But the animal is not ready to eat. The octopus retracts its tentacle.

``It's kind of the exciting part of our day, to watch them and see how long it's going to take,'' Harmon says.

Next on this tutor's list of tasks: a maze with food in it.

She'll have to work fast, though.

The octopuses' average life span is 12 to 18 months. MEMO: One of the octopuses is on display in a 40-gallon tank at the

Virginia Marine Science Museum, 717 General Booth Blvd., a mile south of

the Virginia Beach resort area. Winter hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

STEVE EARLEY photos/The Virginian-Pilot

An octopus approaches a jar at the Virginia Marine Science Museum as

it prepares to retrieve the food inside. Three octopuses have

learned how to do this.

The trained octopus uses its tentacles to twist the lid off the jar.

The museum is using the exercise to gauge octopuses' mental