A six -year -old boy was injured when an octopus grabbed the arm and did not release it after the child reached a touch tank in the aquarium of San Antonio, said his mother.
Britney Taryn, the child’s mother, has gone viral on Tiktok after publishing about her son’s encounter with a giant octopus of the Pacific on a visit on July 14. The marine creature joined the arm of her son Leo, said, and pointed out that they are often and have touched the animal many times before.
In some videos, the child’s arm can be covered with small dark spots: purple suction bruises from his wrist to the armpit.
“He began to say: ‘Mom, he doesn’t let me go,” Taryn said in a Tiktok video.
Three adults were needed to get the octopus from the little boy’s arm, he said.
Shortly after the accident, the Aquarium of San Antonio published a video about Tiktok about the bruises that this octopus can leave behind, but did not refer directly to the story Taryn has been sharing. The employee in the video said that bruises are not harmful and will disappear within 7 to 14 days.
Meg Mindlin, an Octopus biologist, said that Octopi “felt and explores his surroundings” using his arms and trusts the taste sensors in his sucking cups to understand what is happening in his world.
Taryn’s videos have caused an online debate about whether it is safe for children to touch these animals, but Taryn has refrained from calling the accident an attack. She has said in videos that she and Leo have returned since then to the aquarium of San Antonio to see the same octopus.
Even so, she says she never received any warning about what the octopus could do before allowing her son to interact with him. They took her to social networks, he said, to share the warning for others, because while Leo was calm in the situation, other children may not be.
In Tiktok, he has campaigned for safer and more comfortable living conditions for this animal and others in similar situations.
Taryn says that it has communicated with the aquarium of San Antonio and has asked them to adequately document the incident and for an explanation of the aquarium security protocols for when visitors interact with animals. From a video posted on Monday, I had no news.
