220 NATURAL HISTORY OF OUR SHORES 



just in easy reach of a tentacle for the octopus will only 

 eat fish when hard pressed, crabs and molluscs are its 

 favourite and regular food. 



The octopus has memory, which extends over several 

 days at least. Some captive specimens that were hungry 

 were offered some large oysters. Great efforts were made 

 to open these, the threadlike tip of a tentacle feeling around 

 the edges of the shell for some small point of admission for 

 hours, but with no result. 



The same oysters were offered to them a week after, 

 but were only favoured with a moment's glance, they 

 were not even touched. 



Its methods of capturing its prey are varied. If the crab 

 is in the open and the octopus is out on the hunt it rises 

 above its victim, and with tentacles so outstretched that 

 the web that joins them part of their length forms 

 a parachute it descends like a cloud on its victim. 

 Oftentimes the octopus lies in wait within a crevice, or a 

 hollow under a boulder which it has excavated by blowing 

 out the sand or gravel ; there it watches, and if a crab 

 passes by throws out a tentacle, which, neatly rolled into 

 a vertical coil, unwinds itself gently towards the crab, 

 flicks it with the sucker- clad tip of the tentacle, and draws 

 it to its lair. 



It is remarkable that with little exception the crab does 

 not attempt the least resistance to the octopus. If a 

 crab, scuttling along, espies the lair of an octopus it halts 

 in its career, and raises its claws in a defensive attitude, 

 but that is all. The tentacle " flicks " it, and makes it- 

 fast to its suckers, and in its defiant attitude, as if petrified, 

 it is drawn into the lethal chamber. 



I have seen a moderate-sized octopus thus catch seven- 

 teen crabs in succession, just storing them in the custody 

 of its manifold suckers, to await their turn. 



The octopus does not break the shells of its victims, 



