‘Henry’ the hexapus as he has been named by his keepers at Blackpool Sea Life, was first found in a lobster pot off the north Wales coast.

He was moved to Blackpool Sea Life centre along with seven other octopuses. The fact that he was lacking two extremities was not noticed until some time after. His missing legs are believed to be due to a genetic birth defect and does not seem to affect him in any way.

“We’ve scoured the Internet and talked to lots of other aquariums and no-one has ever heard of another case of a six-legged octopus,” said supervisor Carey Duckhouse.

Henry is causing much more of a fuss than the aquarium keepers first thought as The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have criticised the centre for not returning the creature to the wild. The letter and response is shown here.

The aquarium are clearly very knowledgable about the animals needs and providing the best possible care for it. I support the aquarium and believe that they are doing an excellent job of keeping their animals healthy and happy.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Public Aquaria. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.