A six-year-old boy was hurt when an octopus grabbed on to his arm and wouldn’t let go after the boy reached into a touch tank at the San Antonio Aquarium, his mother said.
Britney Taryn, the boy’s mom, has gone viral on TikTok after posting about her son’s encounter with a giant Pacific octopus on a July 14 visit. The sea creature attached itself to her son Leo’s arm, she said, noting that they go often and have touched the animal plenty of times before.
In some videos, the boy’s arm can be seen covered in small dark spots — purple suction bruises from his wrist to his armpit.
“He started saying, ‘Mom, it’s not letting me go,'” Taryn said in one TikTok video.
It took three adults to get the octopus off the small boy’s arm, she said.
Shortly after the accident, the San Antonio Aquarium posted a video on TikTok about the bruises this octopus can leave behind, but did not directly refer to the story Taryn has been sharing. The employee in the video said the bruises are not harmful and will go away within 7 to 14 days.
Meg Mindlin, an octopus biologist, said octopi “sense and explore their environment” using their arms, and rely on taste sensors in their suction cups to understand what is going on in their world.
Taryn’s videos have sparked online debate about whether it’s safe for kids to touch these animals, but Taryn has refrained from calling the accident an attack. She has said in videos that she and Leo have since returned to the San Antonio Aquarium to see the same octopus.
Still, she says she never received any kind of warning about what the octopus could do before allowing her child to interact with it. She’s taken to social media, she said, to share the warning for others, because while Leo was calm in the situation, other children may not be.
On TikTok, she has campaigned for safer and more comfortable living conditions for this animal and others in similar situations.
Taryn says she has reached out to the San Antonio Aquarium and has asked them to properly document the incident and for an explanation of the aquarium’s safety protocols for when visitors interact with animals. As of a video posted Monday, she had not heard back.