‘No one would believe if this wasn’t recorded’: Man teaches octopus named Takoyaki to play the piano

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but you sure can teach an octopus how to play the piano in six months.

That was what Swedish musician Mattias Krantz has learnt after he successfully taught an octopus – named Takoyaki, or Tako – how to play a modified underwater version of the musical instrument.

Takoyaki is a popular Japanese snack made from a flour-based batter, typically filled with diced octopus among other ingredients.

Mr Krantz had acquired his musical apprentice from a Portuguese fishery in March, reported The Washington Post.

A video posted to Mr Krantz’s YouTube channel on Nov 5 shows him walking through a Korean seafood market where he ponders over which creature to train, including a crustacean and two fishes, before landing on Tako.

“Everyone is here looking for dinner. I’m looking for my next piano student,” he says in the video.

The training plan began with earning Tako’s trust.

The shy and timid cephalopod initially rejected Mr Krantz’s food bribes, but gradually accepted them with much vigour and speed.

“I think he started to realise that I’m the person who saved him from becoming takoyaki,” said Mr Krantz.

After gaining his pet’s trust, the next item on Mr Krantz’ agenda was to build the perfect piano for Tako.

Realising that Tako was unable to push down on the piano keys with its tentacles, Mr Krantz installed handles on the keys, which Tako could wrap its tentacles around and tug on to produce sounds.

Then came the hardest challenge yet: figuring out how to guide Tako towards specific piano keys.

In his first attempt, Mr Krantz used flashing lights placed under specific keys to alert Tako towards them, but this failed.

Mr Krantz then tried moving the handles on the intended keys, and while this momentarily worked, Tako eventually hit a plateau, moving a maximum of three keys.

To motivate his apprentice, Mr Krantz used its greatest weakness against it – crabs.

Utilising a contraption which Mr Krantz dubbed “the crab elevator”, a crab placed in a pipe is positioned above the piano. With every key that Tako got right, the crab is progressively lowered until Tako completed a melody.

The attempt proved successful.

Mr Krantz was even able to teach Tako the note progression of Baby Shark, but said Tako was off-tempo, reported The Washington Post.

“It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done, and maybe the coolest thing, but also the worst ever,” Mr Krantz reportedly said. “I never pushed myself to such limits.”

Their first duet happened after four months of training, with Tako on the piano and Mr Krantz on the guitar.

They practised every day, with Tako improving “until the music Tako made sounded so good, no one would believe me if this wasn’t recorded”, said Mr Krantz.

“Tako had become more than I could ever wish for,” he said.

Mr Krantz told The Washington Post that he now plays with Tako every other day.