You'll notice that he only has six legs. I can't explain that, except to say that I sketched him from a photograph that I found on some biology website. I guess his other two legs were busy or he had them tucked away for a rainy day or something.
When I was studying in Australia, I happened to come across an article about octopuses while I was searching for articles about coral reef damage. (That was when I was studying on an island on the Great Barrier Reef. Writing that makes me feel like I'm writing about someone else who did those things in another lifetime. I mean, did I really design experiments to measure coral reef damage on the Great Barrier Reef?)
Anyway, I don't remember much about the octopus article, except that it contained this story about a scuba diver who came across a female octopus that had introduced herself to him by biting his hand. (He himself described it as an introductory act even though it was an incredibly painful bite that made his hand swell up.) The octopus lived in one of the places where he often dived, so he often saw her. One day she grabbed onto his hand and tried to pull him along with her. Turns out octopuses are incredibly strong and he had little choice but to go. She led him over to her home and showed him another octopus, a male, that was hiding there. The other octopus had been stuck with a fishing spear and was dying. The diver wrote that he thought the octopus wanted him to do something to save the other octopus, but of course the diver could do nothing and the other octopus died. The diver wondered if the female wasn't trying to save her mate, though there is no evidence that octopuses form mating bonds.
"Mating bonds"? That makes me sound like I have a degree in biology, doesn't it? I would never describe human relationships that way, so I don't know what leads me to describe octopus relationships that way. And yes, yes, I know we're not supposed to anthropomorphize animals, and tomorrow I won't anthropomorphize animals twice to make up for doing it once today, okay? But I loved that octopus story. I loved it and was saddened by it and it has stuck with me for--what?--eleven years.
David also, several weeks ago, told me about an article that he had read that suggested that octopus would be the dominant species on the planet (surpassing even Homo sapiens) if they had longer lifespans. Octopuses' lifespans vary from six months to five years, with most species believed to live about two years. Females mate only once in their lives and they die soon after from--get this--signals that are released from their optic nerves. (If the cells that release the signals are removed, the octopus will live several months longer, until it starves to death, so that is the kind of experiment that makes me despair of science.) Males also mate once and they only live after that for a few months.
There's your octopus trivia for today.
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