Inky the Octopus Makes a Break for It

Inky, an octopus, has escaped from the New Zealand national aquarium by exploiting a slightly-ajar tank lid. “I don’t think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, as octopus are solitary creatures,” Rob Yarrell, the aquarium manager, said. “But he is such a curious boy.”

“Octopuses are famous escape artists,” Yarrell told the Guardian. “But Inky really tested the waters here. He would want to know what’s happening on the outside. That’s just his personality.”

According to Radio New Zealand, the lid to his tank was left open while maintenance work was being done in Inky’s room, and he made his ultimate escape through a drainage hole 150 millimeters in diameter.

A local fisherman brought Inky, who’d been living on a reef and fighting with fish, to the aquarium in 2014 after catching him in a crayfish pot.

Yarrell described Inky as an “unusually intelligent” octopus, which really is saying something. (“Meeting an octopus...is like meeting an intelligent alien,” diver and philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has written. They are “are a separate experiment in the evolution of the mind.”)

“The staff and I have been pretty sad,” Yarrell said. “But then, this is Inky, and he’s always been a bit of a surprise octopus.”