Copulation

A Photographic experience

Copulation

This is the female Octopus displaying the colour she harbored during reproduction... Make sure you have plenty of air if you want to witness this fascinating coupling, the foreplay lasts forever...

A male interested in mating approaches a female just close enough to stretch out a modified arm, the hectocotylus, and caress her. This arm has a deep groove between the two rows of suckers and ends in a spoon-like tip. After a period of courtship activity, the male inserts his arm under the mantle of the female, and the spermatophores travel down the groove on the hectocotylus to the female's oviduct. Soon after mating, the female begins to lay eggs, each enclosed in a transparent capsule, in her lair, producing about 150,000 in two weeks. The female guards the eggs for the next 50 days, jetting water to aerate and clean them. The young of such species as the white-spotted octopus are only about 3 mm (0.12 in) long. They float to the surface and become part of the plankton for about a month, then sink and begin their normal life on the bottom.