An octopus made headlines for lashing out at a man on an Australian beach.
Geologist and author Lance Karlson was about to take a swim in Geographe Bay, on Australia's south-west coast, when he spotted what he thought was the tail of a stingray emerging from the water.
On closer inspection he realised it was an octopus – and an apparently angry one, at that.
A video of the encounter, which went viral, shows the animal striking out at Mr Karlson with one of its tentacles.
It was like a barbed hook going into my skin
But could the octopus really have taken a such a strong disliking to him?
Octopuses are known to be intelligent – about as smart as a golden retriever, according to one estimate.
They have been known to escape from their aquarium tanks and find their way back to the sea, as one did in New Zealand by using a drainage tube.
They can also open jars from the inside, or outside.
And they have been known to create games for their amusement.
One octopus in Germany was said to repeatedly shoot water at a spotlight overhead to knock out the light to watch the mayhem that unfolded.
They used to be thought of as solitary but are now believed to be quite social.
Keepers say they have different personalities, and they can “occasionally” take a disliking to someone, said Sy Montgomery, an octopus expert.
He described how one octopus at the New England Aquarium would squirt a volunteer with water whenever it got the chance.
"Using his funnel, the siphon near the side of the head used to jet through the sea, Truman [the octopus] would shoot a soaking stream of saltwater at this [volunteer] whenever he got a chance," wrote Mr Montgomery, in Orion Magazine.
“Later, she quit her volunteer position for college. But when she returned to visit several months later, Truman, who hadn’t squirted anyone in the meanwhile, took one look at her and instantly soaked her again.”
Researchers have even measured differences in the personalities of octopuses in experiments, studying 44 East Pacific red octopuses in tanks in 1999.
They opened the tank every other day for two weeks and touched the octopuses with a test tube brush before offering them crabs to eat.
They recorded 19 separate responses. Another study from 1993 observed different personality types in octopuses, with some responding passively, and others inquisitively, according to the BBC.
The animals have been known to attack humans before, such as when one woman in the US draped an octopus on her face for a picture.
It dug its suckers in and bit her "not once, but twice. It was like a barbed hook going into my skin," Jamie Bisceglia told King 5 News after the encounter in 2019.
One large team of researchers suggested in a peer-reviewed article that the creatures may be aliens from outer space, after a meteor brought alien viruses crashing down to earth, infecting a population of primitive squid, which evolved into octopuses.
"Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene," they wrote.
Whatever the truth, octopuses are certainly different in some ways, biologically speaking.
They have three hearts and multiple brains, for a start.
And about 10 per cent of their genes do not have a match in other animals.
"Octopus bimaculoides [has] about 2.7 billion base pairs," Carrie Albertin, a graduate student in biology at the University of Chicago, told The World, a public radio news magazine and podcast in the US.
“That’s about 90 per cent of the size of the human genome, which is about 3.2 billion. This is many times bigger than the genomes of other animals.”
Expo details
Expo 2020 Dubai will be the first World Expo to be held in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia
The world fair will run for six months from October 20, 2020 to April 10, 2021.
It is expected to attract 25 million visits
Some 70 per cent visitors are projected to come from outside the UAE, the largest proportion of international visitors in the 167-year history of World Expos.
More than 30,000 volunteers are required for Expo 2020
The site covers a total of 4.38 sqkm, including a 2 sqkm gated area
It is located adjacent to Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai South
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE players with central contracts
Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Rameez Shahzad, Shaiman Anwar, Adnan Mufti, Mohammed Usman, Ghulam Shabbir, Ahmed Raza, Qadeer Ahmed, Amir Hayat, Mohammed Naveed and Imran Haider.
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