https://www.facebook.com/scifri/videos/10154790968318403/

Cephalopod Week has just kicked off with this new video, featuring Richard Ross, his secret home aquarium/lab, and some great footage and information about breeding octopuses – specifically, octopus chierchiae, the lesser Pacific striped octopus.

According to Rich Ross, in his article on these lovely little creatures,
“One of the most astonishing features of this species is the female’s ability to lay multiple clutches of eggs over its lifetime. The reproductive strategy for most octopuses is semelparous, laying many small eggs at once and then dying. The small eggs almost always hatch as planktonic paralarvae and are essentially impossible to raise in captivity (although there has recently been some small success in that area). Octopus chierchiae however, is iteroparous, and it lays several, smaller clutches of eggs before dying. What makes Octopus chierchiae even more attractive from a breeding standpoint is that the eggs are large, and the hatchlings emerge essentially as miniature adults which makes raising the hatchlings possible in captive environments.

When we put the male and female together, they copulated within minutes. The smaller male sized up the female and then quickly jumped on her, inserting his hectocotylized arm into her mantle. The mating lasted several minutes and the animals were then returned to their individual homes. It was like cephalopod Christmas morning.”

featured image credit: Richard Ross