The shell of the tank looked empty, but turned out to be a giant squid. She didn't move. She stretched her ruffled arms as her skin became a pattern of bronze stripes.
"She's trying to talk with us, but we don't know what she's talking about," said Grasse, manager of the Marine Biological Laboratory, an international research center in Woods Hole, Mass., in the southwestern corner of Cape Cod.
Scientists are trying to turn the striped octopus into a model organisms that can live and reproduce in research institutions and contribute to scientific study over many generations, like mice or fruit flies do.
Scientists are fascinated by the advanced, camera-like eyes and large brains of the Cephalopods, which evolved independently from the eyes and brains of humans. The biggest brain of any arthropod is found in the cuttlefish.
Biologists would benefit from model cephalopods. There are both ethical and logistical challenges to keeping these brainy and often bizarre animals in captivity. The researchers at Woods Hole have been able to raise squid over multiple generations. A single squid can tell scientists a lot.
Having different models to answer different questions is incredibly valuable, according to a developmental biologist at the facility.
Scientists have been surprised by the unfortunate habits of the octopuses. They are notorious escape artists. It's hard to build up a breeding population because mothers die as soon as they reproduce.
Last year, Mr. Grasse and his colleagues announced they had raised three generations of an especially promising octopus species in their lab, more than anyone had before.
There is a miniature zebra-striped octopus with a trick up its sleeves.
Roy Caldwell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, first met the lesser Pacific striped octopus in Panama in the mid-1970s. He pulled rocks from the ocean to find the shrimp.
He brought some of the animals back to Berkeley. I thought that it was a bad idea for one of the females to lay eggs because I knew she would die.
A 1984 paper by a Panamanian scientist confirmed that the female of this species could reproduce several times.
They were an attractive subject for lab research due to their size. Dr. Caldwell couldn't find any more in Panama. None of the people he asked had seen any.
Dr. Caldwell got an email from a high school student who wanted to know how he could take care of his new pet. The zebra stripes on the octopus were clear.
Dr. Caldwell traced the animal back to the collector. He was able to get a few lesser Pacific striped octopuses and try to get a colony going in his lab. He never got past the second generation. The females didn't hatch after that. He suspected that inbreeding was a problem.
The question was not answered in 2016 when Dr. Rosenthal came to the lab. He recruited Mr. Grasse from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A Monterey Bay aquarist came to Cape Cod to help build a new facility for many-armed animals.
The facility today is filled with rows of tanks and smelling of seawater. People squeeze between racks, checking tanks, mopping puddles, and feeding several species of cephalopod around the clock.
The scientists gave the animals a buffet of live and frozen seafood when they started their colony. They watched the animals' body language and skin colors to see what they liked best. The Pacific striped octopuses have their stripes, but can dial up the contrast or fade them away.
Mr. Grasse said that after you work with these cephalopods long enough, you can learn how to speak them.
An animal will reach out to taste something. If the food tastes good, the octopus quickly wraps it around with all eight arms and heads to a shelter to eat it. The food may be thrown onto the side of the tank if it doesn't like what it is offered.
Scientists discovered that males who are ready to mate perform a dance with their arm tips as if twirling a bunch of maracas.
Mr. Grasse kept the young in individual cylinders so they wouldn't snack on one another. The hatchlings go through a phase of intense swimming where they can escape through a small gap between the enclosure and its lid.
Mr. Grasse said that materials such as AstroTurf or the fuzzy side of a Velcro strip can keep them from scaling vertical surfaces. The babies of the lesser Pacific striped octopuses could climb these materials.
Mr. Grasse said that octopuses are more easily secured than this species.
He now uses foam to seal the enclosures. A tank for adult Octopus chierchiae has a perimeter of Velcro and a heavy rock on the lid, according to Mr. Grasse.
She said that she was astonished at how fast this had all gone. We are at a point where we can try to understand them.
An ideal lab animal isn't just one you can keep healthy for a long time, according to Dr. Rosenthal. It's also one that scientists can manipulate. Scientists can see the machinery of biology more clearly by turning genes off or adding new genes. Experiments in mice and other lab animals have allowed researchers to test the roles of individual genes and create animal models of human diseases. It has been more difficult with the cephalopods.
Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory have succeeded in using the tool CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genes of a squid local to Cape Cod, as well as the lab's hummingbird bobtail squid. They used sharp needles and small scissors to inject materials into the animals.
The hummingbird bobtail squid is the most promising animal model to date because it is easy to raise, poke and keep in our chambers.
Studying squid isn't enough.
Dr. Albertin said that people often think of cephalopods as the same thing. They are actually quite different.
There is a problem with the eggs. She said that all the ones she's worked with have a hard, leathery eggshell. Her needles can't pierce it. She was able to cut into the eggs with scissors, but encountered another problem.
Dr. Albertin said he didn't know how to inject an egg into an octopus.
The scientists don't think it's impossible. They have to figure it out before the lesser Pacific striped octopus becomes a model organisms.
The lesser Pacific striped octopus is a species that could help solve a mystery.
Scientists can get the California two-spot octopus from the wild. It has some disadvantages. The tank at the Marine Biological Laboratory has a brick on top so the person can get out.
The problem is that the mothers die. One two-spot octopus at the lab was active and curious, shooting a jet of water at visitors, while a neighboring tank held a dying female hunched over her clusters of transparent eggs. The mother had one eye open.
The rapid decline of mother octopuses is something that Z. Wang is interested in.
She documented how female two-spot octopuses stopped eating while they tended their eggs, stroking them and blowing water across them. The mothers started acting strange, sometimes eating their own arm tips or wounding themselves with their suckers, before dying.
Dr. Wang is going to start her own lab this fall. She wants to start her own colony using the methods used by Mr. Grasse and company. She may be able to find a key that lets the animals survive.
She has been meeting with other researchers to discuss how to use the lesser Pacific striped octopus in research.
Dr. Caldwell wasn't able to breed the chierchiae beyond two generations. He said that the results at the facility in Woods Hole show promise.
Mr. Grasse and his colleagues have raised over 700 children. They let the colony go out in the last generation.
Because of Covid restrictions, only one person could be in the facility at a time. To make sure they didn't make more animals than they could care for, the scientists had to put the brakes on breeding the octopuses. A geriatric female over 2 years old is the only colony member still alive.
The colony was showing signs of inbreeding. There were fewer hatchlings that lived to adulthood. A baby has 16 arms.
Five new lesser Pacific striped octopuses arrived at the facility this winter. The scientists will use what they have learned to start a colony. They hope to keep the genes healthy by adding new animals.
Mr. Grasse is giving artificial plants and shells to enrich the artificial homes of the cephalopods. He makes sure that the animals have variety in their diet, changes of scenery, and fun projects such as a shrimp in a jar. He said that these enrichments help their mental health.
According to a neuroscientist at San Francisco State University, letting species perform their natural behaviors lowers their stress. She said that the enclosures she uses for octopuses are very rich and that they often can't find them.
Dr. Crook started a colony of hummingbird bobtail squid with people from the Marine Biological Laboratory. She showed last year that octopuses experience pain. She hopes that her lab's findings will influence how other scientists care for animals in captivity.
The better the welfare of the animal, the better experimental data you get. It's better science if you have fewer animals.
There are no laws in the United States that regulate research on animals. When scientists want to study an animal with a backbone, such as a mouse or bird or fish, they need ethics approval from a committee within their institution. Scientists studying worms can do whatever they want.
The Marine Biological Laboratory is using the same review process for their research as other institutions.
In the absence of new laws, Dr. Crook says captive breeding is another way to improve the welfare of octopuses. If an animal comes from the wild, researchers don't know how it was caught or handled.
The M.B.L. is an amazing source of captive bred cephalopods.
The team in Woods Hole hopes to improve the lives of lab animals and give scientists a powerful new tool to answer big questions in biology.
They are incredibly complex and different from us, which is why we study them.
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