> We knew we were at the right place, we could see the -- the patch on the rock. And there were all of these tattered egg cases just in the spot where she had been.
> Tattered egg cases means that the babies had been born?
> Well, the first thing we did was search. Are there babies on the rock? Are the babies still here? Or did any of them survive? Or was it some sort of apocalyptic demise at the hands of all those hungry looking crabs?
> So they’re frantically sort of searching around the rock. Searching and searching and searching. And then they begin to see little babies that are her species. And they see a little baby here ...
> And a little baby there.
> Little octopuses crawling around.
> They’d been feeding and growing, and it was pretty clear that they were hatchlings from that clutch of eggs that we had observed.
> And did you see her?
> Nope. I’m certain that she had been consumed by some scavenger.
How did "the mother definitely died after the eggs hatched" turn into "this octopus differs from others by not standing guard until the mother dies of exhaustion"?
The only difference the podcast mentions is that this octopus has a gestational period about 50 times as long as other, better-known octopuses.