Animals do the most amazing things. Read about them here in this series by Janaki Lenin.
Octopuses are solitary creatures. Even when mating, they don’t canoodle. That’s because octopuses are cannibals.
Males keep females at arm’s length and shove little packets of sperm into oviducts located inside females’ round mantles. Should females show any sign of aggression or hunger, males flee. One species is so petrified of being eaten, the males detach their sperm-laden arms and offer them to females.
In 1975, Panamanian marine biologist Arcadio Rodaniche was surprised that larger Pacific striped octopus didn’t behave like other octopuses. He watched in amazement as mating pairs snuggled up together into the same den for a few days like honeymooners, and had intimate sex by locking mouths and linking their sucker-lined arms. They even shared food mouth to mouth like lovey-dovey humans. That would be a suicidal move for males of other octopus species. Females didn’t immediately die after laying eggs, but survived for months afterward.