Family finds joys, challenges of caring for Terrance the octopus
Dr. Cameron Clifford, a dentist in Edmond, Oklahoma, said his son Cal, 9, has been infatuated with octopuses since he was 3 years old.
“Every birthday, every Christmas, every holiday, he would always say: `All I want is an octopus,'” Clifford said.
For a while, the family nurtured Cal's interest by buying him octopus toys and octopus T-shirts, dressing him as an octopus for Halloween and taking him to aquariums to see live octopuses. In October, Clifford sprang for the real deal. He ordered his son a California two-spot octopus to keep as a pet in a tank in his bedroom. It arrived via UPS in a bag of water packed inside a cardboard box on Oct. 11, Cal's ninth birthday. Cal named it Terrance.
Unbeknown to the family, Terrance was a female, who released what Clifford described as “a chandelier” of puffy little eggs in December. He assumed the eggs were unfertilized until one night in February, when, while cleaning the tank, he picked one up and examined it closely.
“I accidentally popped it, and this droplet comes out and spreads out these tiny tentacles and does three swim strokes across my viewpoint,” he said.
Over the next week or so, 49 more hatchlings emerged from their eggs, setting off a rush by the family to keep the tiny octopuses alive and find them homes. Clifford has been documenting the experience on TikTok, where some of his videos have received more than 2 million views.
“It's expensive, wet chaos,” said Clifford, 36, who has spent thousands of dollars on tanks, water filters, water chillers, crabs, snails and clams in an expanding cephalopod aquarium that briefly took over part of a bathroom in the family home. Among other challenges, he has had to contend with a small electrical fire and about 10 gallons of saltwater that spilled on the carpet of his son's bedroom.
“It's a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of work and emotion and money and time.”
It is also rewarding, he said. The family loves to pet Terrance, Clifford said, and makes her “puzzles” by putting a crab in a clear container for her to pull out and eat. Many scientists discourage people from keeping octopuses as pets, noting that most require live food, carefully calibrated aquatic conditions and frequent stimulation. Paul Clarkson, director of husbandry operations at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said that when he first heard about the Clifford family, he thought they had “no business caring for an octopus.”
But after watching Clifford's TikTok videos, he was “pleasantly surprised.”
“It's a delightful story and it seems like they have done a pretty remarkable job as home aquarium keepers, caring for that animal,” Clarkson said.
Still, he cautioned that most pet owners are not equipped to care for an octopus.
“They don't make good pets and, as that family documents in their story, the effort, the time, the money involved in caring for that animal is tremendous and is, at times, kind of a 24/7 job,” Clarkson said. “My recommendation is: Don't try this at home.”