Lyle Zapato yanked more than a few legs in 1998, when he launched his website and campaign to “Save The Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.” The website, complete with photographs and information about the endangered cephalopod and its habitat, was convincing enough that researchers used it for several media literacy studies. But what if this hoax actually has plenty of legs to stand on?
Writers and researchers have been documenting tree-climbing octopi for centuries. The Greek poet Oppian tells of an octopus that climbed an olive tree to eat its fruit and kiss its branches. In Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder explains why the hungry cephalopod climbed the tree: because he wanted to get to other tide (or over the fence and to the salted fishponds). In the more recent Words of the Lagoon, marine biologist R.E. Johannes recounts Palauan fishermens’ stories of octopi giving birth in mangroves [1]. Although Johannes points out how risky it is for an aquatic species to give birth in a tree—not to mention that no known octopus gives live birth—he doesn’t discredit the stories. Doubtful so many knowledgeable fishermen could misidentify an octopus, Johannes briefly wonders if he was pranked before explaining: “Palauan informants were quick to differentiate between actual observations and legends, but all of them were quite serious about the reality of the octopus story.”
We may never find an octopus climbing a Pacific Northwest pine, but there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest some octopi probably have climbed a tree. They stretch their arms across damp rocks to get from one tide pool to another, and they are notorious escape artists. If Inky could bust through an enclosure, slink across eight feet of floor and through 164 feet of pipe before escaping into Hawke’s Bay [2], he could probably climb a tree with four hands tied behind his back—anything to leaf the aquarium!
[1] R.E. Johannes, Words of the Lagoon Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1981. https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_TloVDfV7QLoC/bub_gb_TloVDfV7QLoC_djvu.txt
[2] Dan Bilefsky, “Inky the Octopus Escapes From a New Zealand Aquarium,” The New York Times, April 13, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/world/asia/inky-octopus-new-zealand-aquarium.html