SAN ANTONIO – A mother is calling for change at the San Antonio Aquarium after an octopus latched onto her son\u2019s arm during an interactive exhibit.<\/p>\n
Britney Taryn took her son Leo and his brother to the San Antonio Aquarium on July 14. The mother says they have visited the aquarium multiple times since 2022, and they are encouraged to touch the Octopus. The mother says this time was different from their previous encounters.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeo put his arm in the tank, the octopus wrapped his tentacles around him and wouldn\u2019t let go,\u201d Taryn said. \u201cSo, I tried to get Leo down and get out of there, but the octopus came over the tank with us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Taryn screamed for help. The mother says no employees were nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the first employee wasn\u2019t able to remove the tentacle from him, he called for backup,\u201d Taryn said. \u201cThey brought ice packs to distract the octopus. It was about 5 minutes, according to the time stamps on my pictures. Leo stayed around to see if the octopus was ok.\u201d<\/p>\n
The octopus left suction bruises on Leo\u2019s arm, but the 6-year-old says the only pain he feels is for the octopus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have now learned that this octopus is senescence, so it\u2019s not probably going to be around for much longer,\u201d Taryn said. \u201cSo, we did go say goodbye to it to make sure he had a chance for closure. Our biggest goal is to save this octopus and the animals in the aquarium.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We went to the San Antonio Aquarium for comment and were told to email them a request for information. We did so, and we have not heard back.<\/p>\n
We also reached out to the director of ectotherms at the San Antonio Zoo to learn more about octopuses\u2019 behavior. Craig Pelke says octopuses are normally gentle.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on my experience and what I saw, the octopus was possibly overstimulated,\u201d Pelke said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We looked into the aquarium\u2019s latest inspection report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The San Antonio Aquarium was found to be in compliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – A mother is calling for change at the San Antonio Aquarium after an octopus latched…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,17969,70889,70891,70888,70886,70892,7202,70887,7203,70890,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-112010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-animal-welfare","10":"tag-bruises","11":"tag-employee-response","12":"tag-interactive-exhibit","13":"tag-octopus","14":"tag-overstimulated","15":"tag-san-antonio","16":"tag-san-antonio-aquarium","17":"tag-sanantonio","18":"tag-tentacles","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-tx","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114957185568063162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}