Lauri Manteufel, age 8, of New Brighton, Minn., for her question:
How big is a baby octopus?
A mother octopus may be small enough to fit in your hand. she may be a larger type with arms that stretch l2 inches wide. Or she may be a giant with eight arms long enough to stretch across a room. The small mother has smaller babies than the medium ¬sized and giant mothers.
The octopus has 50 cousins that enjoy life in different parts of the sea. One medium sized cousin is at home in the Atlantic Ocean. she is blue, freckled with brown, and her body is covered with bumpy warts. she has a collar of eight trailing arms around her neck, and she seems to be all head and arms. The body of this Atlantic octopus is about three inches long, and she can stretch her arms about l2 inches wide.
smaller octopuses live near the seashores. some of these little mothers are no bigger than one of your fingers. And where the sea is warm and deep lives the giant octopus. This big mother can stretch her long, strong arms l2 feet and sometimes 20 feet wide. she is a shy creature and likes to hide. It is not easy to watch her family life or her babies and growing children.
An octopus is always a very good mother. Her eggs form in a hollow funnel inside her body. This same funnel is used to take in water and to send out shells and other wastes from her food. It can squirt a jet of water to jerk her through the sea or a jet of ink to cloud the water and hide her from danger. When the eggs are ready the funnel squirts them out into the water.
The little oval shaped eggs have glassy shells, and the mother does not leave them until the babies are hatched. she may stick them to a rock or string them in long chains or fix them in rosettes. she cleans and polishes them and hoses them with jets of water. For maybe three long months she guards them and never leaves them, not even to eat. At last the eggs hatch into miniature babies just like their mother.
The eggs of the. medium sized Atlantic octopus measure eight to an inch, and the newborn. babies are one eighth of an inch long. smaller mothers lay smaller eggs that hatch into smaller babies. Big mothers lay eggs one inch long that hatch into one inch baby octopuses.
A mother octopus lays thousands of eggs. The Atlantic octopus may lay l80,000 eggs and the job may take her two weeks. She sticks them to a rock and stands guard. Her work is done when the newborn babies swim off into the sea. sad to say, most of the little midgets will be eaten by hungry fishes but a few will escape and grow up to have swarms of baby octopuses of their own.