The Larger Pacific Striped Octopus Breaks Every Rule of Octopus Behavior
The larger Pacific striped octopus, or harlequin octopus, is a species first documented in the 1970s but still without an official scientific name. Unlike the famously solitary and cannibalistic octopus, it forms colonies of up to 40 individuals, mates beak-to-beak in a gentle embrace, shares food and dens, and can reproduce multiple times throughout its roughly two-year life. Found in the tropical Eastern Pacific, it exhibits unique hunting techniques and a distinctive stripe-bar-spot color pattern.
While most octopuses are cannibalistic and have to exercise extreme caution while mating, these octopuses mate with their ventral sides touching, pressing their beaks and suckers together in an intimate embrace.
- teiferer
Irony: Nowhere on that page does it say how large that octopus actually is. An inch? 2 meters? Unclear.
To save you the google search, it's about "tennis ball size" according to https://30a.com/larger-pacific-striped-octopus/ . Somebody should add that to the wiki.
- TulliusCicero
> The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name.
Is that a joke? It takes over 50 years to come up with a scientific name for a species?
- NewJazz
One critical feature of these octopuses is that they don't just die after mating (most species of octopus do)... Which opens up possibilities, like teaching their young skills they have acquired.
- drakonka
Something about seeing "gregarious nature" used to describe a non-human animal feels so... whimsical? I like it. Likewise with "intimate embrace" and other descriptions that follow.
- rolfus
I've been fascinated by Cephalopods since reading (the excellent) book "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. They are probably the closest we'll get to an alien intelligence. Their nervous systems evolved along a completely different evolutionary path from us vertebrates. It pains me that they are so short lived, though. I wonder what potential could be unlocked by their intelligence if they lived for 40 years or longer.