By: Jennifer Horton Updated: Oct 25, A juvenile octopus grows at a rapid rate, perhaps because of its short life span. By the end of its life, an octopus will weigh one-third as much as all the food it has eaten [source: The Economist ]. The common octopus only lives an average of three to five years, though, so it doesn't have much time to waste. Once the octopus reaches adulthood, it will eventually get the urge to mate.
As with most creatures, the octopus's main purpose in life is to reproduce. However, if it knew just what was waiting for it soon after, it might think twice. Both the male and female octopuses die soon after mating. The male dies a few months afterward, while female dies shortly after the eggs hatch.
For octopuses, mating is a pretty subdued affair. And since she dies after brooding is over, she might as well keep at it for as long as possible. Indeed, G. The clutches are also very small—for comparison, the giant Pacific octopus lays clutches of around , These are all signs of a reproductive strategy called K-selection , where mothers invest more effort into raising fewer offspring.
Perhaps a month brooding period is exceptional only because we have never had a chance to measure these periods before. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Go Further. Animals Climate change is shrinking many Amazonian birds. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London.
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Depending on the time of year and temperature, this can take up to a year. In this time, she is the ultimate momma bear: protective, caring, and determined. She stays with her eggs until they are ready to hatch as tiny fully formed octopuses ready for the big and scary underwater world. Because octopuses are semelparous, they only have babies once in their lifetime.
And while octopuses can lay up to , eggs, they realistically lay between 56,, eggs. That does not mean that all of them hatch. Additionally, once these babies do hatch and the female has done her one job, she dies, leaving them all alone. These babies are tiny, fragile, and up until this point have been completely relied on their mother. Now they are in open water, and while they can produce tiny squirts of ink when distressed, only a small amount of these babies actually survive, grow, and complete the cycle by contribute to the next generation of octopus before dying themselves.
There are various species of octopus, and only few have been researched. The Giant Pacific Octopus is the most studied, and therefore most octopus facts are specific to this species. At birth, the Giant Pacific Octopus hatchlings are the size of a sesame seed.
How tiny is that?! To put that into perspective, an adult Giant Pacific Octopus measures 20 foot in length. A video of octopus Eggs hatching. There is no specific place octopuses choose to lay their eggs. They often simply look for the safest space. This may be amongst seaweed, an underwater rock den, or any place that can give both eggs and mother some shelter. This once again largely depends on the species of octopus and the temperature of the water, but the eggs incubate for around months.
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