An octopus is rivalling the Commonwealth Games strongmen – after taking up weightlifting.
William the octopus – named after William Wallace – is a star attraction at the Loch Lomond Sea Life Centre at Balloch.
The one-year-old male started attracting comparisons with the Glasgow 2014 heavies after it became obsessed with a set of dumbbells. Now he ignores his other toys to pump iron instead.
Senior aquarist Colin Sinclair said yesterday: “Octopuses are very intelligent creatures so we often give William toys to keep him occupied. He loves moving heavy rocks around so we put a dumbbell in his tank to see if he would like it, and it’s become his favourite thing.
“Visitors say he should be in Team Scotland for the Commonwealth Games. He can lift a considerable weight and is always rearranging heavy rocks in his tank.”
William the weightlifting octopus has inspired bosses to name an entire squad of “aqua-athletic” fish and other sea creatures.
Bosses reckon Glasgow 2014 swimming stars would struggle to match the stamina of their golden heart trigger fish which does 15 laps of the huge Ocean Tank every hour.
Their high-jump king is the sand-hopper, a tiny crustacean just 1/8 of an inch long that can jump 20 inches, or 160-times its own height.
And the Loch Lomond attraction’ s black tipped reef sharks’ acceleration over a short distance would leave even the world’s fastest man, sprinter Usain Bolt, lagging behind.
The British tub-gurnard is the attraction’s candidate for the walking event, as it has specially adapted gills that it uses like legs to walk along the seabed feeling for morsels beneath the sand.