Video: Real Octomom Gives Birth to Little Octopods

May 13, 2011
FoxNews.com

Here's something you don't see every day: the birth of thousands of octopi, caught on film.

These tiny octopuses are the offspring of a Caribbean Octopus vulgaris acquired by the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in January. Soon after the octopus moved into the aquarium, biologist Richard Ross writes on his blog at Advanced Aquarist, she surprised everyone by laying eggs. Three weeks later, those eggs hatched, turning the octopus' tank into a "snow globe" of baby octopi, or paralarvae.

Each hatchling is 0.04 inches (1 to 2 millimeters) long. After they were born, the aquarium fed the baby octopi even tinier brine shrimp and zooplankton. Unfortunately, Ross wrote, octopus paralarvae are difficult to keep alive in captivity, though many survived up to 26 days.

The tale has a sad end for mom, too. This species of octopus stops eating after she lays her thousands of eggs and then dies soon after they hatch. The mother O. vulgaris lived about two weeks after her larvae emerged, Ross told LiveScience.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day from Everything Octopus!

Here are some interesting facts about mother octopuses (saying "octo-mom" is just out of the question for obvious reasons!):

The female octopus births about 200,000 eggs (depending on species) at a single time, the only time in her life when she will reproduce.

She carefully cares for these eggs during the incubation period, which generally lasts for one month (once again, this time period can vary depending on the species). She blows currents of water over them to keep them oxygenated and guards them from predators. During this time, she does not hunt and begins to weaken.

Occasionally, a female octopus will ingest some of her own eggs for sustenance.

Once the eggs hatch, the babies are on their own. The mother is left weakened from the constant care she has given her hatchlings, sacrificing her own needs for theirs.

Mother octopus leaves the lair in her weakened state and is unable to fend off predators.

Mother octopus guarding her brood.
Even in the octopus world, a mother's love know no boundaries! THANK YOU to all the moms out there who have given so much to raise us all. Now, if you want a good laugh about octopus mommy-hood, check out this hilarious post from The Oatmeal, This is Why an Octopus is More Awesome Than Your Mom.

Happy Homecoming for Seattle Aquarium Octopus

King5.com
February 19, 2011



SEATTLE - It's octopus week at the Seattle Aquarium and it was homecoming day for one famous resident.

"K-2" is a 57-pound female octopus, prepared for her release by aquarium biologists Saturday morning. She mated earlier this week with another octopus named Ivar.

Divers prepared to guide her to a den on the bottom of Elliott Bay.

KING 5 Chief Meteorologist Jeff Renner was part of the release team, rolling K2 down to divers waiting in the water, much to the delight of hundreds of spectators.

The octopus willingly went into the arms of an aquarium biologist, descending along a piling to the bottom, where she searched for a suitable den.

The aquarium will be featuring octopus activities all week, together with another release of an octopus next Saturday.

Octopus Goes Looking for Love at the Seattle Aquarium

Published 02/15 on KomoNews.com
Written by Theron Zahn

SEATTLE -- Six hearts and 16 arms went on one very complicated blind date this past Valentine's Day.

Captain the giant pacific octopus was the lucky participant. Scientists at the Seattle Aquarium hope he'll mate with a female named Buster, and a crowd is here to watch.

"The most romantic thing we could think of doing on Valentine's Day," said Luke Reicheley.

Captain left behind a blast of ink at a diver, but once the diver made it to the other side of the tank, it didn't take long for Captain to turn on the octo-passion.

"They didn't seem to mind (there was a crowd)," said Laura Groennebaek. "They went right for it."

Biologist Kathryn Kegel says so far, so good.

"They're all together; all tangled up and were just waiting to see how it goes," she said. "A lot of times they'll do it in the evening and not actually in the public hours."

And who can blame them with everyone watching?

"I agree, nighttime is the better time," Kegel said.

So it looks like a love connection. Kegel says they could have up to 1,000 babies.

"They're about the right age and the right size," Kegel said. "They were checking each other out during the week."

The couple better find love soon, because next Saturday, Buster will get a new home underneath the pier at the Seattle Aquarium.

Octopus Orgy!

Nothing like a little cephaolpod lovin' to brighten your day.


I found this at ScienceBlogs.com. If you're in the mood for a good laugh, visit the link and read the comments!

Video: Sexy Octopus French Film

Ok, maybe the title was a bit misleading, but not too far off the mark. The video below is a scene from "Going Beneath the Surface Yo La Tengo: The Sounds of Science" by French filmmaker/inventor/scientist, Jean Painleve. Painleve narrates the video (which is in French) in a way that sounds, well, sexy. Go ahead and watch. You'll see what I mean...

Video: Octopus Hatching from Egg

Wow - this is a great video showing an octopus actually hatching from its egg. The hatching is followed by different demonstrations of skills that the young octopus learns.

Octopus with 96 Tentacles!

The better to hold you with, my dear...

This is old news, but fascinating nonetheless. The octopus pictured below has 88 additional tentacles, a rarity, even for a creature as strange as the octopus.


This strange specimen is on permanent display at the Shima Marineland Aquarium in Japan. The octopus actually has 8 arms attached to its body, and the additional 84 tentacles are all extensions of those 8.

The 96-tentacled Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) was captured in 1998 in nearby Matoya Bay. It weighed 3.3 kilograms (about 7 lbs) and measured 90 centimeters (3 ft) long. Before dying 5 months after being placed in captivity, the creature laid eggs, making it the first known extra-tentacled octopus to do so in captivity. All the baby octopuses hatched with the normal number of tentacles, but unfortunately they only survived a month.

Currently there is no theory that fully explains the surplus tentacles, although speculation maintains the oddity to be the result of abnormal regeneration that occurred after the octopus suffered some sort of injury.

In the above photo, the 96-tentacled female octopus can be seen laying eggs.

Penghu Enters Two-week Octopus Moratorium

From www.etaiwannews.com, March 28
Written by Elizabeth Hsu

Fishermen in the Penghu archipelago off southwestern Taiwan have been banned from fishing for octopus along the coasts of the islands during the period between March 29 and April 12 in an effort to protect an indigenous variety of the species from extinction.
According to a statement from the Penghu county government, violators will be liable to fines of up to NT$30,000 (US$888).

According to research by the Penghu Marine Biology Research Center, the Penghu octopus -- an important species for Penghu's economy -- usually appear in intertidal zones from February to May to breed and spawn.

In its one-year lifespan, the species only mates and spawns once, with the female producing only around 20 eggs.

The species' biomass has dramatically decreased over the years due to over-fishing and typhoon damage to the coral reefs that serve as their breeding grounds.

Life Cycle of an Octopus

The first thing that happens to the octopus in the life cycle of an octopus is that it hatches from an egg. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to sink down to the bottom of the ocean, where the cycle repeats itself. In some deeper dwelling species, such as the Dumbo Octopus, the young do not go through this period. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; as they become part of the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to many plankton eaters.

A juvenile octopus grows at a rapid rate, perhaps because of its short life span. Extremely effective at turning the food it eats into body mass, a young octopus increases its weight by 5 percent each day. By the end of its life, an octopus will weigh one-third as much as all the food it has eaten. Should a larval octopus be fortunate enough to survive this difficult period, it enters into the next stage of its life: it grows into an adult octopus.

Around the age of 1 or 2 years old, the full-grown octopus is ready to mate. When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature.

Blue-ringed octopus male and female mating; see the male inserting his reproductive tentacle into the female's funnel

After the eggs have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen.

Photo of Giant Pacific Octopus eggs by Brandon Cole.

The female does not eat during the two to ten month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs (Incubation period varies according to species and water temperature). At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother dies.

Then, we are back to the beginning of the life cycle of an octopus.

Eggs and one newborn Pacific Giant Octopus.

Octopus Sex More Sophisticated Than Arm-Wrestling, Part II

From Berkeley.edu

Written by Yasmin Anwar

Caldwell said most of what we know about octopuses comes from laboratory observations of just a few species that are summarized in books such as "Cephalopod Behavior" by Roger Hanlon and John Messenger (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Because they are such bashful sea creatures, octopuses' mating rituals have been hard to get a handle on. "They're obsessively secretive, solitary and pretty spooky," Caldwell said. "If you watch them, they watch you back. It's hard to study them."

So, when UC Berkeley graduate Christine Huffard, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., discovered a thriving community of Abdopus aculeatus while doing her Ph.D. fieldwork in Sulawesi, she was overjoyed.

(Above) A male octopus's hectocotylus, or mating arm, (with pink lining) is inserted into the female's mantle.

"Each day in the water, we learned something new about octopus behavior, probably like what ornithologists must have gone through after the invention of binoculars," said Huffard, the study's lead author. "We quickly realized that Abdopus aculeatus broke all the 'rules' — doing the near opposite of every hypothesis we'd formed based on aquarium studies."

There are nearly 300 species of octopus in the world, ranging from the giant octopus in the Pacific Ocean to the tiny Octopus wolfi in the tropics. Mating is literally an octopus's life's work and can take place several times a day once the animal reaches sexual maturity. It usually begins with the male octopus poking the female with his long, flexible, hectocotylus arm and then slipping it into her mantle cavity.

Once the sperm packet has been deposited, the female retires to her den and lays tens of thousands of eggs, which she weaves into strings and attaches to the roof of her underwater dwelling. She keeps the eggs clean by blowing jets of water on them and is unable to leave her den to forage for food during this time. After about a month, the eggs hatch and the weakened mother octopus dies. The father also dies within a few months of mating, leaving the newborns to fend for themselves.

"It's not the sex that leads to death, Huffard said. It's just that octopuses produce offspring once during a very short lifespan of a year. And as the research team discovered, that once-in-a-lifetime lovemaking session is much more than just arm wrestling.

"This is the first study to show a level of sophistication not previously known in the sexual behavior of an octopus," Caldwell said. "We got it wrong before, and what this tells us is that we need to do a lot more fieldwork."

Octopus Sex More Sophisticated Than Arm-Wrestling, Part I

From Berkeley.edu

Written by Yasmin Anwar

For decades, scientists have viewed octopuses as unromantic loners, with mating habits nearly devoid of complex behavior. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, has found that at least one species of octopus engages in such sophisticated lovemaking tactics as flirting, passionate handholding and keeping rivals at arms' length.

(Above) A grey male octopus mates with a female.

For the UC Berkeley study, recently published in the journalMarine Biology, biologists witnessed an array of complex mating behaviors as they snorkeled two meters or less above the shallow reefs of northern Sulawesi in Indonesia. For several weeks, they trackedOctopus Abdopus aculeatus, a diurnal species of cephalopod that typically sports a spiky tan body the size of a small orange and 8-to-10-inch-long sucker-lined arms.

"This is not a unique species of octopus, which suggests others behave this way," said Roy Caldwell, a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and co-author of the study.

In the wild, researchers observed macho octopuses that didn't just mate with the first female that crossed their path. Many picked out a specific sex partner and jealously guarded her den for several days, warding off rivals to the point of strangling them if they got too close. When flirting or fighting, they would signal their manliness by displaying striped body patterns.

Researchers also saw small "sneaker" males that moved in on unsuspecting conquests by masquerading as females. They did this by swimming low to the ground in feminine fashion and not displaying their "male" brown stripe. Plus, for the males, size really mattered: "If you're going to spend time guarding a female, you want to go for the biggest female you can find because she's going to produce more eggs," Caldwell said. "It's basically an investment strategy."