this just came on the news here tonight, the lake is here in Arkansas, here is the story....


Octopus Found In Lake Conway
( Air Date: 12/3/2003 )
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said
today that a fisherman caught an octopus in Lake Conway near
Mayflower earlier this week.
Fisherman John Mazurek of Glenn Ellyn, Illinois, caught a real,
live, good-sized octopus on Monday at the lake`s dam.
The commission said it can`t explain how the octopus got in the
lake, but a common guess is someone had it in an aquarium and it
grew too big and was dumped into the lake. It was alive when
Mazurek caught it.
He told the commission that the octopus was clinging to one of
the gates at the lake`s dam when he saw it and grabbed it.
Mazurek`s fishing license should cover octopusing. And he didn`t
exceed the daily limit on this species.
The commission said the only violation was the dumping of the
octopus into the lake.

link is here
my question is how long was it in there, and how did it survive?

well...it is amazing how adaptable creatures can be. we once had an angel fish in our tropical aquarium that ate the other fish, so he got shipped to our hard water aquarium with the goldfish (huge goldfish!) he survived quite a long time in there. this octopus could have been there a while or just days i'd guess.

UUM, aren't octopi (correct plural representation?) salt water creatures? I would think that big problems would result in such a case. For instance, fresh water fish, for example, have a slimy layer on their exterior to prevent the hypotonic (freshwater) lake from causing their cell membranes to lyse (burst) due to osmosis of water through said membrane in an attempt to make the solution on either side of the membrane equal (this is the essence of osmosis). The net result of all of this is, of course, that the cells get really big and then eventually pop open because of excess internal pressure. All of this is, of course, not good for the organism (fish, octopus, etc.).

It could be carried by an African Swallow!