The world’s most adorable octopus

June 17, 2015 • 3:00 pm

Here, via Science Friday, we have a yet-unnamed deep sea species of octopus, studied and soon to be named by Dr. Stephanie Bush, a postdoctoral fellow at The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. It looks like a weird Pac-Man character, and barely has tentacles. What astounds me most is the incubation time of the eggs: perhaps 2-3 years! That would make the eggs extremely vulnerable to predators, and is thus puzzling, but perhaps development simply can’t proceed too rapidly in a cold, deep-sea environment. I find the latter hard to accept, for surely other deep-sea invertebrates develop faster. But I don’t know from octopodes.

At least one other deep-sea octopus, however, has been described as producing eggs that take four years to hatch! That’s the longest known incubation period for any animal.

From California Diver:

Opisthoteuthis specimens were first collected in 1990, and live in the deep sea along the California coast at up to 1,500 feet deep. Their body measures about 7 inches in diameter, and its tentacles are webbed, giving it the appearance of an umbrella when spread out along the seafloor. These octopus swim by moving their fins, pulsing their webbed arms, pushing water through their funnel for jet propulsion, or all three at once. The octopus often swim up off the bottom and hover a bit just above the seafloor, looking for small crustaceans, worms, and other food. The thing that makes this octopus especially unique—and cute—is its puppy dog eyes, which Bush says, are unusually large for the size of its small body.

OpisthoteuthisD577-1-593x600
Opistoteuthis, sp. nov.

16 thoughts on “The world’s most adorable octopus”

  1. What astounds me most is the incubation time of the eggs: perhaps 2-3 years! That would make the eggs extremely vulnerable to predators, and is thus puzzling, but perhaps development simply can’t proceed too rapidly in a cold, deep-sea environment.

    Is it developing the entire time, or does it develop for some amount of time and then just use the egg for food? If the latter, I’d be tempted to think of it more as a life stage rather than pre-birth development.

    1. What I meant is that it’s sitting there completely vulnerable for all that time, and I’m puzzled why it can’t develop faster and become less vulnerable to predators. What’s puzzling is its inability to get away from anything for so long a time: they’re sitting there naked and exposed. .

        1. The long development is not unusual for deep sea animals, according to the video. Long incubation down there may not be as dangerous as it seems, since remember predators and prey of any size (along with mates) are very scarce down there. The ecology of deep sea life is very much influenced by predators not getting to eat large prey very often, and females and males not finding each other very often.
          So with rather little predator based selection for fast development, they may be able to afford to develop slowly in the cold, dark abyss.

      2. I’m purely speculating here, not knowing much about the field, but here’s my two cents’ worth…

        I suspect the metabolism in this cold, low oxygen environment is pretty slow. Also, it is relatively barren so the density of predators would be low as well, decreasing the possibility of the egg being eaten. And in the wild there may be some action taken by the mother that hides the eggs that we are not seeing in this tank.

        Still, gestation of over a year is a long time.

    1. Coincidentally enough…breakfast this morning was bagels with lox. And, yes, Baihu got his share of lox…not sure what he’d think of octopus, though.

      b&

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