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Comment by neodypsis | Hacker News Reader

So intelligent yet so short-lived.

There have been experiments that remove the gland that produces the hormone that kills off octopuses after copulation and birth. The octopuses seemed to live on with no problem, seemingly implying that the early death was indeed an adaptation to make room for the newly born.

How much longer could they live?

4-6 months (nearly 50%) longer.

Elaborating on an earlier point, making room for the newborn after reproduction (via premature death) is evolutionarily advantageous because octopuses are cannibals…

https://www.livescience.com/why-octopus-moms-self-destruct

I don't recall or know how much longer. Upon searching for it now, I couldn't find any information. There were vague allusions to months longer or doubling the lifespan, but those didn't cite anything. I'm not sure of the normal lifespan across the different octopus species, but I seem to recall it's generally around just a couple years. Apparently, removing the optic gland was done all the way back in 1977 by Jerome Wodinsky. I thought it was much more recent than that.

Edit: This video has always stuck with me. A single octopus female was observed guarding her eggs for over four years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFCQltYMLQk

They are such deeply interesting creatures.

Their digestive tract fuses shut as sexual maturity

Its a darwinian failure (or success) because it cant be weeded out by selective pressures since it happens after reproduction

Can it be surgically re-opened? To see how much could they really live?

Fascinating thought but I’m afraid of smart organized octopus

We’re lucky they die so young

Haha! It would've been cool to share this planet with another intelligent species. How would we communicate with them?

Could an octopus reproduce a second time if their digestive tract remained open? It seems like an octopus that could breed multiple times would have a selection advantage in the form of more offspring.

> cant be weeded out by selective pressures since it happens after reproduction

if there was a population that didn't starve after sex, they might out-compete a population that did, say, by passing on learned behavior to their offspring

Their offspring are near microscopic and in vast numbers. A behavior mentoring relationship would be hard

Perhaps if they evolved a stage where the tiny things latched onto the parent for protection from being food, and lived off the parent, then the parent might evolve to produce an edible skin (for tiny octopus) and hang around longer

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