Essentially their entire mating cycle is what causes this. They’ve got a gland behind the eye that puts them into mating mode and once it starts it never turns off until they overdose on sex hormone.
Most cephalopods are voracious hunters that eat and eat to grow big and then once mating mode switches on they just focus on mating, which results in a shit ton of babies. Every step of that cycle has an extremely high mortality rate resulting in strong selection pressures for the best of every phase. When they do something, they go big.
There’s a specific life history strategy called semelparity, which is what you’re describing (breeding once then dying). To my understanding, this is incentivized if the chances of getting a second attempt to breed are too low, and so it becomes more evolutionarily advantageous to simply go all out on the first attempt
To be clear, it’s still an advantage and for the ones that it isn’t they don’t die after mating. Most cephalopods are both predators and prey that life cycle results in a very high mortality rate. If you don’t hunt enough, you fail and if you get eaten you fail. The deep cold water ones though, tend to have to live longer due to less prey and have fewer predators so they tend to not die after mating.
Not everything in evolution ends up having a point. So long as a problem does not impact the propagation of children it can end up moving forward to the next generation.
I would guess that if there is an Evolutionary reason, it’s probably that octopi with this drive reproduced More than octopi that didn’t.
According to the article the females don’t fare any better either.
I didn’t know this about octopi, what’s the point, evolutionarily, to self destruct after reproducing?
There is no point, evolution is about successful reproduction and everything else is just random chance.
If a evolutionary tweak happens that gives your off spring better chances, but your arms fall off after sex then it’ll probably perpetuate.
Just goon forever
Gooners win again
nope, then you’d see some of same species showing the behaviour, others not.
Essentially their entire mating cycle is what causes this. They’ve got a gland behind the eye that puts them into mating mode and once it starts it never turns off until they overdose on sex hormone.
Most cephalopods are voracious hunters that eat and eat to grow big and then once mating mode switches on they just focus on mating, which results in a shit ton of babies. Every step of that cycle has an extremely high mortality rate resulting in strong selection pressures for the best of every phase. When they do something, they go big.
Holy shit what a way to go.
Get horny > have sex > orgasm > keep orgasming > die of too much orgasm
I wonder what would happen if you removed the gland? How long could they live and how big could they get?
They’ve done that and they lived twice as long. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/12/01/octopus-surgery-has-a-surprising-end-longer-life/a8fabbce-0d76-400f-a9b4-e95b8b93094e/
Fascinating!
There’s a specific life history strategy called semelparity, which is what you’re describing (breeding once then dying). To my understanding, this is incentivized if the chances of getting a second attempt to breed are too low, and so it becomes more evolutionarily advantageous to simply go all out on the first attempt
Thanks, one solid answer! It could be that it used to be an advantage at some point and now it’s just perpetuated
To be clear, it’s still an advantage and for the ones that it isn’t they don’t die after mating. Most cephalopods are both predators and prey that life cycle results in a very high mortality rate. If you don’t hunt enough, you fail and if you get eaten you fail. The deep cold water ones though, tend to have to live longer due to less prey and have fewer predators so they tend to not die after mating.
Not everything in evolution ends up having a point. So long as a problem does not impact the propagation of children it can end up moving forward to the next generation.
I would guess that if there is an Evolutionary reason, it’s probably that octopi with this drive reproduced More than octopi that didn’t.
I read that it’s so the parents don’t compete for resources with their young, helping to support the young’s survival
Fair, another possibility, thanks for the answer
Reproduction is the goal. It could be as simple as giving the young a chance to out compete their r****ded parents for limited food.