overly Canada Goose sale aggressive to other Canada Goose

The octopus that strangled its lover to death

Canada Goose Jackets Octopuses make for Canada Goose Jackets unusual lovers. canada goose To mate successfully, a male octopus must approach a female, uk canada goose and gently probe her with a single arm. He may grab her, but cheap Canada Goose carefully, before inserting his arm up canada goose coats on sale into her body, injecting packets of sperm.

After sex, a male octopus is probably not expecting to be probed by a female. He is not expecting to feel the brush of her arm, as it maliciously coils around his body. He is not expecting her canada goose clearance sale to squeeze, cutting off the supply of water to his gills. He is not expecting to be held in a deadly, suffocating embrace.

Canada Goose Parka In an extraordinary act, witnessed by scientists, the male octopus was strangled to death by his female lover, just moments after having mated with her.

buy canada goose jacket cheap The behaviour is so rarely seen that the incident, and a couple of others like it, may change our understanding of octopus behaviour.

canada goose coats View image of Hunting a new mate? Or a new victim? (credit: David Fleetham / NPL)

canada goose clearance Octopuses have long been considered relatively gentle creatures. Though they use their eight arms to catch prey, which is devoured using a large, sharp beak in their mouths, they tend to avoid aggression.

canada goose Octopuses are Canada Goose Coats On Sale more Canada Goose Online likely to retreat from a threat, such as a predator, than to fight, and they tend to shy away from most confrontations with other animals, says Christine Huffard, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, at, Moss Landing, California, US.

In fact, octopuses spend most of their time, and use a variety of strategies, trying not to be seen. overly Canada Goose sale aggressive to other Canada Goose online animals on the sea floor would defy that strategy by attracting attention, she says.

cheap Canada Goose The more we get into the water and watch animals quietly from a distance, the more likely we might be to understand one day why female cephalopods might kill their mate

canadian goose jacket They can become aggressive with each other, particularly when fighting over food, dens, and mates. But they tend to grapple, pushing at canada goose store each other, and pulling at their respective arms. They weren Canada Goose Outlet thought to be constrictors, strangling each other as a snake might suffocate its prey.

canada goose deals However, Christine Huffard and colleagues have witnessed canada goose factory sale two separate incidents uk canada goose outlet of octopuses doing just that in the wild.

View image canada goose uk shop of Suckers or weapons? (credit: Jeff Rotman / NPL)

The first occurred during a dive within 10 metres of water off Fiabacet Island, when the researchers came upon a female common reef octopus sitting exposed on a coral canada goose clearance reef outside her den. Nearby, sat a slightly smaller male.

Canada Goose Outlet For 15 minutes the two animals mated. Then the female unexpectedly lunged forward, and with two arms, grabbed the male around his mantle, a structure octopuses use as a respiratory chamber to pass water through a funnel and across their gills. She dragged the male towards her. After two minutes, she then wrapped an arm around the opening to the mantle, and canadian goose jacket squeezed tight. After another two minutes, the male stopped moving. The female then enveloped the male body with her own and dragged him into her den, where the buy canada goose jacket cheap scientists presume she ate him.

Details of the grisly encounter are published in the journal Molluscan Research, along with those of a second Canada Goose Parka encounter, this time between two octopuses of different species.

Canada Goose sale View image of A male common reef octopus probes a female (credit: Georgette Douwma / NPL)

Then, divers observed a wonderpus octopus repeatedly approach buy canada goose jacket and chase a canada goose uk black friday mimic octopus foraging for food. The encounter seemed to end peacefully, but when reviewing images taken of the event, the scientists realised that the wonderpus octopus had actually wrapped an arm around the mantle of its rival, trying to strangle it.

Both incidents are reminiscent of another witnessed in 2007, when scientists observed one merciless female spend two days cannibalising a small male, having previously attacked and suffocated him after having mated with him 13 times.

Canada Goose online For now, scientists do not know how common constricting might be in these or other octopuses in the wild. But such deadly struggles do appear to make octopuses unique; as the first invertebrates known to aggressively grasp and kill another animal using constricting.

Constricting might also prevent the subordinate octopus repelling the attack by expelling ink, which is also released through the funnel in the mantle. Expelling ink is a defensive tactic usually used to repel predators, as it clouds the water, and potentially contains irritating chemicals.

View image of The canada goose coats deadly grasp of the female captured on camera (credit: C. Huffard)

For zoologist Mark Elgar of the University of Melbourne, Australia, an expert on invertebrate mating behaviour, the actions of the canada goose black friday sale female octopuses make sense, given their eight pronged anatomy.

canada goose clearance sale specific method by which the female octopus captures and kills her mate constricting him with her many legs is novel, but only because this can be done only by an octopus, says Elgar.

canada goose store Huffard agrees. Octopuses are a type of mollusc known as a cephalopod, a group that also includes squid. unique anatomy opens doors to many behaviours that are unavailable to other molluscs, constricting being just one of them. invertebrates, such as insects and nudibranchs, are known to engage in sexual cannibalism.

buy canada goose jacket None however, strangle their lovers.

canada goose coats on sale View image of A male wonderpus octopus is photographed strangling a rival (credit: Mike Bartick)

Female black canada goose outlet sale widows and praying mantis are https://www.alifeoutofdebt.com notorious for killing and eating males before, during canada goose uk outlet or after sex. And similarly gruesome attacks have been observed in chironomid flies. A female chironomid uses her mouthparts to pierce the head of her male mate and, after extracting his body fluids as he transfers sperm to her, carries his desiccated carcass against her body for days.

Males are thought to be eaten as, once they have mated, they can be a valuable source of food. Male Argiope spiders, for example, tend to be consumed by the female after their cheap canada goose uk second insemination.