![]() Without them, the female octopuses abandoned their eggs, resumed feeding, and some even mated again. The optic gland is similar to the pituitary gland of most land animals, so-called because it sits between the eyes. In 1977, Brandeis University psychologist Jerome Wodinsky showed that if he removed the optic gland from female Caribbean two-spot octopuses ( Octopus hummelincki), something interesting happened. Females often kill and eat their mates if not, they die a few months later, too). (If you're wondering, the males don't get off any easier. In the later stages, some females in captivity even seem to intentionally speed along the death spiral, banging into the sides of the tank, tearing off pieces of skin or eating the tips of their own tentacles. After a female octopus lays a clutch of eggs, she quits eating and wastes away by the time the eggs hatch, she dies. Octopuses are semelparous animals, which means they reproduce once and then they die. ![]() But the final days of a female octopus after it reproduces are quite grim, at least to human eyes.
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