Octopus eggs

I had the chance to see octopus eggs and just had to share! The two-spotted octopus at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium recently laid her eggs. Somehow she created a sticky type of olive-green substance to adhere them to the glass. Check out the photo, the eggs look like slender white grapes and also hang like grapes do from the vine.

There were three or four separate bunches of eggs all attached to the glass like the one in the photo. The eggs are very beautiful in their own way, so delicate and translucent. But in the case of octopus eggs, great beauty is offset by great tragedy.

While the eggs signify the beginning of new life, for the female octopus the eggs also mean she has reached the end of her life cycle. Typically, a female octopus dies shortly after the eggs hatch. According to the book Octopus: The Ocean’s Intelligent Invertebrate, this is a common trait in cephalopods.

So with this post I bring you good and sad news all at once, but that is nature’s way sometimes.