Pet Theory

One pet octopus suddenly became more than four dozen. They went viral. Then it all went south.

Once upon a time, there was an octopus-besotted boy named Cal who lived in the landlocked state of Oklahoma. One day, a special package appeared at his house: a small pet octopus, with bright blue eyespots on its head, that Cal named Terrance.

Terrance turned out to be female — and pregnant. One octopus turned into 51, eight tentacles into 408. The boy’s father, Dr. Cameron Clifford, worked day and night to keep the octopuses alive.

Last spring, Dr. Clifford, a dentist, chronicled the family’s efforts on TikTok, and the story soon went what can only be described as megaviral. The TikTok videos racked up millions of views, and then the news media came calling. For a brief period last April, the story seemed to be everywhere: National Public Radio, USA Today, The Associated Press, The Daily Mail, Good Morning America, The Washington Post and, yes, The New York Times.

And then, the TikTok updates stopped abruptly. The media and the public moved on. But periodically, I found myself wondering what had happened next. So I called Dr. Clifford to find out.

“It’s unfortunately not that storybook of an ending,” he told me. “Fairy tales leave out a lot of details.”

Now, a year after the cephalopod squad became famous, what once seemed like a modern fairy tale might be better read as a cautionary one — about the power of social media, the perils of fame and the challenges involved in living with (and loving) creatures that are made for a world far removed from our own.