Anne Clark, age 10, of Holland, Michigan, for her question.
How is a baby octopus born?
Mrs. Octopus is a distant cousin of the snail and the clam and shares with them the traits of the animal Phylum Mollusks. As well, she shares with many other members of the Animal Kingdom the instinct to be a good mother.
An octopus has about 50 first cousins and all of them live in the sea. The small¬est one grows to be about one inch long while the giant of the family may measure 28 feet. Large or small, an octopus has a soft, round body fixed to a soft, round head and a circle of eight tentacles around his neck. The tentacles act as walking and swimming legs, as arms to grab fishes and shellfish and as fingers to stuff food into the mouth. An octopus also has a pair of keen, round eyes and a sharp beak. As a rule, the beak is used only to fight other octopuses. The giant octopus lives in deep water, often in mid ocean. His smaller cousins may be found in shallow waters near the shores.
A father octopus pays no attention at all to his offspring, but Mrs. Octopus does her best for her children. She lays a batch of large or small eggs, depending upon her size. She may lay them one at a time or in a large batch stuck together like a bunch of grapes. In any case, the octopus eggs are round and glassy clear. There may be 100 or several hundred of them in one batch or even as many as 180,000.
Most marine creatures lay lots of eggs and leave them to drift around helplessly in the hungry sea, but the mother octopus is more considerate. She stays right there with her eggs and guards them. When hungry enemies approach, she drives them away. In some cases, the batch must be guarded for eight long weeks. Through all this time the faithful mother does not leave, even to find food for herself. She forgets her own wishes and stays on guard until time comes for her glassy eggs to hatch into a brood of frisky babies.
The babies are tiny copies of their mothers. They are born knowing how to swim and how to use their tentacles to move around and catch themselves morsels of food. On hatching day, the patient mother is surrounded by hundreds of busy youngsters. They are quite at home in their watery world and she does not have to teach them anything at all. Her work is done and she leaves them. Many of the tiny creatures will be gobbled up by fishes and other hungry animals of the sea. But a few will survive. As these lucky characters eat and grow bigger they learn more about the dangers of the sea. Those that learn all the safety rules will enjoy life in the sea for many years. Like their parents, they will hand on life to new generations every year.
Scientists classify the octopus as a cephalopod, a word which means head and foot. After all, he often uses his leggy tentacles as feet and they are fixed onto his head. True, he is an odd looking fellow and many people think he is ugly, especially if he happens to be a giant octopus of the deep. Actually his body is very graceful and usually tinted with pretty colors. What's more, he can change the color of his skin from shades of pearly gray to blushing pinks.