This Hero Octopus Who Fled His Tank For the Ocean Is All of Us

‘I’m outta here.’

Sometimes you see the door, you feel the call of the great wide world beyond that door, and man, you just go. Anyone who has ever felt that way will relate to the daring escape of Inky the Octopus, a now-former resident of New Zealand’s National Aquarium.

According to the Washington Post, Inky was done with the Aquarium after a two-year stay, and one of his keepers carelessly provided him with an exit:

Inky had said see ya to his tank-mate, slipped through a gap left by maintenance workers at the top of his enclosure and, as evidenced by the tracks, made his way across the floor to a six-inch-wide drain. He squeezed his football-sized body in — octopuses are very malleable, aquarium manager Rob Yarrall told the New Zealand website Stuff — and made a break for the Pacific.  

Rhere’s a fairly long history of octopuses lighting out for the territories, sometimes even figuring out fairly sophisticated measures intended to keep them safely penned inside their captors’ holding tanks. 

Yarrall was pretty hurt by Inky’s departure, as the jilted often are, and reportedly complained to Radio New Zealand that Inky wasn’t even kind enough to leave a gracious note of thanks behind. And were cephalopods capable of gratitude, Inky would’ve had reason to feel it. He’d arrived in Yarrall’s aquarium in 2014 after he was found injured, and the staff nursed him back to health.

It may be that creatures as smart as Inky do indeed feel gratitude. We suspect if Inky had any reason to be miffed, it was because even a contest open to the public to give him a name couldn’t come up with anything more original than “Inky.”

Bon voyage, Inky. We feel you.

h/t Washington Post