16 arms and 6 hearts = true love, for a little while

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.

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.

By Charlie B. (not verified) on 15 Feb 2009 #permalink

Three hearts?

Wow Clinteas... glad you and yours are OK.

By mayhempix (not verified) on 15 Feb 2009 #permalink

Prof Myers - please warn us when a link includes (ugh) ads!

By Pierce R. Butler (not verified) on 15 Feb 2009 #permalink

After the octopi sex-a-thon the male dies first.
More concrete proof the devil is female.

By mayhempix (not verified) on 15 Feb 2009 #permalink

Holy cow, clinteas! I'm so relieved to hear that you're all OK.

They die afterwards? That's so sad.

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.

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.

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.)

By Sven DiMilo (not verified) on 15 Feb 2009 #permalink

Males can mate multiple times, but after this mating period, they enter into “senescence,” the terminal life stage."

The obvious solution is for the male to never stop mating. I wonder if male octopus masturbation would prevent senescence.