Giving birth is definitely not something you see everyday, but an octopus giving birth – that’s something you may never see. However, thanks to the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, you get a chance to see just that: a species of Caribbean Octopus vulgaris giving birth.

They took the octopus in captivity, and just a few days after that, she surprised everybody by laying eggs; and three weeks after the eggs were layed, guess what happened ? A swarm of baby octopi (or paralarvae, as they are called), no larger than 2 milimeters long (0.04 inches) came out.

O. vulgaris hatchlings hatching from Richard Ross on Vimeo.

However, the story takes a sad turning here. Baby octopi are extremely hard to keep alive in captivity, even though they have been fed tiny shrimps and plankton. However, many of them are doing just fine until now, and hopes are still up. For the mother however, there’s a whole different story. This species of octopus stops eating after she lays the thousand of eggs and dies soon after the hatch; in this case, she died after two weeks.

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