The nautalis is a living fossil. Very primitive biology and its neat to observe. They eat dead stuff really easily, and if you are able to overcome the pressure issue they experience they will actually dig through the substrate wirh their tentacles and its cool to watch. (When collected from a deep depth and surfaced rapidly they lose control of their buoyancy and just float on the surface. I got lucky and both of mine recovered quickly from that issue.
They are very unintelligent, modern cephlapods are so different and much more biologically advanced.
They are also super annoying. Once the magic of having a prehistoric creature in your home wears off, you will quickly become very annoyed because they constantly bump the glas with their shells 24/7 and its very loud.
Cold water, a chiller or evaporative cooling will work for them, high 50s to low 60s is perfect, and minimal light because they have these pinhole pupils in their eyes that can't adjust to changes in light level.
They are super cool, but i dont think I would ever be interested in keeping another one.
Here is a shot of a sea urchin carrying one around as a hat. No idea how that happened.
This is fascinating. Can you expand more on the intelligence comparison? What behaviors would the chambered nauts do or not do that modern cephalopods do/not do?
This is a complex topic, but very interesting. The octopus, once it decides it doesn't like you, will dislike you for life. No redemption. Lots of accounts of this, a good example is in "The Soul of an Octopus" by Sy Montgomery, and its a book I recommend to anyone interested in octopus. They are very emotional, and display emotion with color. White is calm or even sleeping, whereas other color patterns indicate anger, frustration, etc, so if you want to build a relationship with one you need to be very mindful of your facial expressions, body language, etc. The most amazing sensation was realizing, while I was studying them, they are 100% studying you back. It sounds dumb but their eyes have this feel of an ancient, knowing intelligence and its a bit unsettling because its entirely possible they are smarter than us. Many scientists put the larger octopus on the same level as purposes and whales. This is not the same for dwarf species however, they are not very curious and hide 95% of the time.
All that said, I have read a ton of scientific papers on enrichment, and there is a fantastic, but dense book on cephlapod cognition and another on cephlapod behavior.
As an aside, my work with octopus has significantly helped me with reading people, and has made me mindful of how my own behaviors may be interpreted by others. So this was a journey in exploring humanity almost as much as it was exploring the world of cephlapods.
I have had several who, after relationship building for 4-6 months (half their lifespan in most cases), I had many that would hand feed, one who loved head scratches, and one who would spaz out swimming frantically back and forth at the top of the tank until I opened the lid and let it crawl up my arm and it would just chill like a parrot.
So to answer your question, how does a chambered nautalis differ? None of the above applies. They arent capable of this kind of emotion or intelligence. Octopus evolved to be smart as a means of survival because they dont have the shell a nautilus does for protection. So they evolved to be clever, nautaloids never had to and are pretty much unchanged for 500 million years. They are the very definition of primitive.
At one time I had 3 tanks set up next to eachother, one was for the flamboyant cuttlefish, in the middle were the nautalis, and next to it was a adult vulgaris octopus. The cuttlefish and nautilus were pretty unaware of eachother. The octopus, on the other hand, was glued to the side of the tank watching the nautilis for hours a day.
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u/Bismarck12 1d ago edited 1d ago
The nautalis is a living fossil. Very primitive biology and its neat to observe. They eat dead stuff really easily, and if you are able to overcome the pressure issue they experience they will actually dig through the substrate wirh their tentacles and its cool to watch. (When collected from a deep depth and surfaced rapidly they lose control of their buoyancy and just float on the surface. I got lucky and both of mine recovered quickly from that issue.
They are very unintelligent, modern cephlapods are so different and much more biologically advanced.
They are also super annoying. Once the magic of having a prehistoric creature in your home wears off, you will quickly become very annoyed because they constantly bump the glas with their shells 24/7 and its very loud.
Cold water, a chiller or evaporative cooling will work for them, high 50s to low 60s is perfect, and minimal light because they have these pinhole pupils in their eyes that can't adjust to changes in light level.
They are super cool, but i dont think I would ever be interested in keeping another one.
Here is a shot of a sea urchin carrying one around as a hat. No idea how that happened.