It's Octopus Week at the Seattle Aquarium, and to kick it off, yesterday they introduced two octopuses to each other for a public courtship. Watch the story from King 5 news.
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It seems that octopuses are even smarter, and more fearless, than previously thought. It has been known for some time that they can be trained to open jars to obtain treats as shown in the promotional video for "Aliens of the Deep Sea" shown below:
There are even stories of them purposefully…
Fans of the traditional Japanese boxed lunch have welcomed news of a self-packing octopus. Staff at the New England Aquarium were able to encourage a 7-foot Giant Pacific Octopus to cram itself into a tiny 15" box. Aquarist Bill Murphy said:
I place one or two live crabs inside the box and the…
New research has revealed some stunning courtship rituals of octopuses including flirting, hand holding, lover guarding, and even stalking the Myspace pages of potential mates.
The studies were conducted by the University of California, Berkeley on Abdopus aculeatus a kind of octopus living in a…
I rather like this illustration I ran across in some reading. It's a bit risqué, and reminded me of some ukiyo-e…the kind of thing you don't usually expect to find in a biology journal.
This line drawing was made from a photograph of a male H. lunulata (shaded) copulating with a female. The arrow…
Hm,OT...
ex and kid just had to evacuate the house b/o approaching fire in Melbourne's Dandenongs...
Got out ok and are now back after fire was brought under control by 110 trucks and 4 helicopters.
Fucking scary shit.And 2 months to go !
glad you're ok, clinteas. Not a good time at all in Vic.
Three hearts?
Octopus porn? Won't someone think of the children?
Wow Clinteas... glad you and yours are OK.
Prof Myers - please warn us when a link includes (ugh) ads!
After the octopi sex-a-thon the male dies first.
More concrete proof the devil is female.
Holy cow, clinteas! I'm so relieved to hear that you're all OK.
They die afterwards? That's so sad.
At least males get to "do it" more than once.
"Females mate only once. Then they find a den and lay their eggs. Males can mate multiple times, but after this mating period, they enter into “senescence,” the terminal life stage."
http://nwnews.com/entertainment/791-take-a-date-to-the-seattle-aquarium…
We'll be moving to the Seattle area this coming summer (yay PNW!)
I'll be great to go to really nice zoos and aquariums again. Here in Naples, the nearest zoo is in Rome, and the only aquarium I know about is Oltramare in Rimini.
"But just as it is on dry land, not all blind dates work out. Though the mood was set with Barry White music, Popeye chose to sleep in his corner while Pepper never got closer than half a tank away."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008746420_octopuslines…
Does anyone know if octopi mating usually occurs during the day or night?
Well, crap. I forgot that was coming up. We've got a membership to the Seattle Aquarium. (Which is a decent aquarium, incidentally, but my last aquarium was the New England Aquarium in Boston and I still love love love their great central tank.)
OT and nothing new to regular readers here but this was the lead story in today's print version of the Seattle Times.
This reminds me of a good old post of PZ's on octopus sex.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/octopus_sex.php
Yes, three hearts. One for each gill and another for the systemic circulation. (The mammalisn heart is functionally 2 hearts; they're just combined into a single organ.)
The obvious solution is for the male to never stop mating. I wonder if male octopus masturbation would prevent senescence.