Friday Cephalopod: Your mother sacrificed so much for you…

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.