The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling on the San Antonio Aquarium to release a giant Pacific octopus housed that grabbed national headlines last week after it allegedly attacked a 6-year-old boy, leaving a string of bruises up his arm.
“This slimy facility’s exploitative encounters are a recipe for disaster, as injuries abound when timid animals such as octopuses are denied everything natural and important to them and subjected to a barrage of grabbing hands,” PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Wildlife Rebecca Smudzinski said in a statement.
Smudzinski continued: “For everyone’s sake, PETA is calling on the San Antonio aquarium to stop forcing wild animals to interact with humans and release this octopus to her natural habitat, if possible, or an accredited facility where she can finally live in peace.”
PETA released its statement after San Antonio mom Britney Taryn went viral on TikTok for a series of videos in which she alleges that a female octopus named Cthulhu wrapped its tentacles around her son and refused to let go during a July 14 trip to the San Antonio Aquarium.
Cthulhu lives in a 1,000-gallon, open-air tank. Taryn maintains that guests at the attraction have long been allowed to reach into the tank to touch the octopus at their own discretion.
However, the San Antonio Aquarium in a statement released over the weekend disputed Taryn’s claim, saying that visitors are only allowed to reach into Cthulhu’s tank during feeding interactions with staff supervision.
“In this instance, the guest leaned her child over the exhibit barrier, allowing him to reach into the habitat without staff supervision,” the San Antonio Aquarium said in its statement about the incident.
The aquarium also stated that Cthulhu did not mean to harm Taryn’s child, but instead exhibited “typical, curious behavior by touching and holding the child’s arm.”
In yet another follow-up TikTok clip, Taryn said the aquarium’s statement released to the media on Saturday was “lying about the incident, lying about me, lying about their response to me.”
The San Antonio Aquarium is owned and operated by Crystal Covino, whose husband, Ammon Covino, was convicted in 2013 of conspiring to buy illegally harvested marine animals. The site has amassed its share of controversy in recent years.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the aquarium after federal inspectors cited the facility for keeping rabbits in overly hot rooms and housing baby kangaroos in areas that doubled as administrative office space.
The aquarium was cited again by the USDA the following year after the quills of a male porcupine impaled an escaped female porcupine.
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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 6, 2025.
