Dad speaks out after son's pet octopus gives birth to 50 babies
An Oklahoma boy and his father, who are raising a pet octopus and 50 octopus babies, have captured the hearts and attention of over 400,000 TikTok followers.
It all began with 9-year-old Cal Clifford and his fascination with all things octopus.
"I've just loved them since I was 2 because they're the closest things to aliens," Cal told "Good Morning America."
Cal's obsession got legs when his dad Cameron Clifford of Edmond, Oklahoma, bought a tank and promised they could actually get one.
The arrival of a mail-order California two-spot octopus in a plastic bag was Cal's dream come true. They named him Terrance but he quickly outgrew his tank and the Cliffords realized keeping an octopus tank was really hard.
"The electrical issue was a little bit scary and that was kinda a wake-up call," Clifford said. "The reverse osmosis filter, although properly installed, had a leak, so finding out that our kitchen island and floors needed to be ripped out, that was a little bit inconvenient."
And then Terrance unexpectedly became an octomom.
"We kind of estimate there was about between 40 and 70 eggs but every one that hatched, that I saw, I was able to catch and contain. It was exactly 50," Clifford said.
Terrance was renamed Terry and the family assumed the eggs were unfertilized. But one by one, they hatched. Each baby got a name.
"Seayonce was like this hippie octopus," Cal explained. "And then Swim Shady -- he's just like, tentacles in the air."
"My wife named one Jay-Sea. Swim Shady came, I think, after and I think Bill Nye the Octopi is the most recent," Clifford added.
Clifford said the octopus and the eggs needed to be separated.
"When the babies started hatching faster than I could kind of catch them, I had to move a lot of them into the bathroom in these small containers because they would eat each other if they were put in the same container," he said.
The makeshift incubators took over bathrooms and countertops that the Cliffords dubbed "Clamsterdam." They realized this was untenable for the long term and then a local reptile buff stepped in to help house the babies temporarily.
The Cliffords say anyone else interested in keeping a pet octopus shouldn't follow their lead.
"No, don't," Cal said. "Scientists don't recommend it."
But at the same time, Cal said he wouldn't do anything differently.
"Nothing, really," Cal continued. "I think he nailed it." he added of his dad's decision to get him an octopus.
