Have you called her lately? Look at this mother octopus, clinging to a deep-sea cliff, hanging over the abyss, guarding her clutch of eggs.
She stayed there, never leaving, for four years. The MBARI submersible would regularly visit the spot and check on her, and there she was, getting weaker and weaker, but still defending her brood…until one day they checked, and she was gone, and there was only a heap of hatched-out husks of her eggs.
If she were human, I’d say that was so lonely, so sad. But maybe an octopus finds hovering over eggs for years and years and starving to death fulfilling.
Four. Years. O.O
Wow, four years. First thing that popped into my head, though, was this quote from this ancient talkie Coneheads:
It’s reassuring to know that the world has at least one responsible Octomom.
Sacrifice? Let’s go wholesale.
Goddess’s bloodlust to be sated in Nepal’s orgy of slaughter
I’ve seen this story before, but at the time I’m sure it said she’d been there for just eleven months. Four years, for Cthulhu’s sake!
if she were human, she would have been institutionalized (provided that a bed somewhere still existed) for being a danger to herself and for being a bad influence on the kids.
Wow. I didn’t even expect cephalopods to live so long. o_O
4 years both her and the eggs without food? o_O
TFA sez the depth was 1400m. Is such an environment enough to require such a slow metabolism?
Also, that’s a very exposed position. 4 years without any predator forcing her to flee?
Also also, what happens to male octopuses after they mate? They just go along with their lives? If so, I’d expect fierce competition for the females.
I didn’t know they lived that long either; I’ll have to waffle about cold temperatures and slow metabolism. Four years is longer than any whale’s pregnancy!
“Tiny”? FFS. It’s about as tiny as California.