Carol Haskell, age 12, of Garwin, Iowa, for her question:
How does an octopus reproduce?
Last week we learned that the octopus is one of the cephalopods, the head footed animals. His body is all head and feet. The feet are those twining tentacles which we may call either arms or legs. Mr. Octopus, of course, has eight of the waving arms while his cousin the squid has ten, He may be a little fellow, just a few inches from fingertip to fingertip. He may be a monster of the deep with an arm spread of 20 feet.
Snails, oysters and other animals related to the octopus are very poor parents. They scatter their eggs into the water and leave the youngsters to take their chances. Most of the little ones become food for larger sea dwellers. Mrs. Octopus protects her eggs from the hungry sea dwellers. She does not leave them until the strange little creaturers are able to swim off on their own.
A big octopus is a powerful animal and the terror of pearl divers. Its long tentacles are studded with suckers and it has eight long arms with which to grasp and hug anything moving through the water. When it comes to a fight, however, even a big octopus is in a bad way. He has no way to defend his soft head and arms. For this reason he spends a good deal of time hiding in the rocky crevices on the sea floor. As a rule, he comes out only to hunt crabs and lobsters which are his favorite food.
Mrs. Octopus retires to such a den when egg laying time draws near. The eggs are pale oval bags. She may lay them one at a time or all linked together like a cluster of grapes. In one season, the mother octopus may lay 180,000 eggs.
The smaller octopuses hatch in a few weeks. The big fellas may take two months. All this time the mother stays with her precious eggs to guard them. She does not leave them even to eat and all this time she is without food.
The youngsters which finally hatch are cute little copies of their parents. Each one is all head and feet. At this stage, about half of his body is soft, blobby head, from which grows a cluster of eight little tentacles. He swims through the water in jerks by letting water into a pocket inside his body and forcing it out with a squirt.
The cute youngster is soon on his way searching for food. Like Mamma, he likes shellfish, but he is not yet ready to tackle a lobster. He goes after fish larvae and small sea crustaceans. He catches his prey in his trailing tentacles and stuffs it into his mouth, which is a small round hole around which wave his trailing arms.