Discovered in the Deep: An Octopus's Garden in the Shade
taylorvich writes:
Scientists have solved the mystery of why tens of thousands of octopuses cluster on the foothills of a giant underwater mountain, two miles down off the coast of California. The pearl octopuses, so named because from a distance they look like scattered gems, seek out warm water seeping through the seabed and use it to speed up the hatching of their eggs
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The mauve, grapefruit-sized female octopuses each lay about 60 eggs and cement them to the bare rock, then guard them until they hatch. Temperature probes showed the water bathing the eggs ranged from 5C to 10C (40-50F), while less than a metre away it dropped to a frigid 1.6C.
Revisiting individual nests, the team saw that rather than taking a decade or longer to hatch, as would happen in the very cold deep sea, baby octopuses emerge from their cosy nests after less than two years, dramatically boosting their chances of survival.
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