After mating, many female octopuses enter a behavioral spiral that causes them to obsessively brood their eggs, stop eating, and eventually die of starvation before their eggs hatch. A study of California two-spot octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides) published last week (May 12) in Current Biology links the strange maternal behavior to changes in cholesterol metabolism that ramp up the production of certain steroids.
“[T]his is an elegant and original study that addresses a longstanding question in the reproduction and programmed deaths of most octopuses,” Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, tells The New York Times. Hanlon was not involved in the study.
More than 40 years ago, scientists connected this self-harming behavior to two optic glands, which are named for their location between the eyes and are not associated with vision, instead being analogous to pituitary glands in humans and vertebrates. Specifically, the team surgically removed ...
