female after giving birth octopus It enters a spiral of self-destruction that ends with its death and the abandonment of its species before it hatches. What their children will never know is that they are destined to be orphans from the moment they are born. When pregnancy occurs, the hormonal control they exert through their eyes revolutionizes a complex shift in steroid levels that causes women to behave erratically, lose their appetite, and eventually die.
The behavior of these cephalopods has attracted the attention of scientists for years. they did not understand how such an intelligent animal could cause its own death and had an average life expectancy of one year.. In fact, this scene is even more baffling in captive-bred females who self-injure to speed up the process, banging against aquarium walls, and twisting their long tentacles around them to lure themselves to death.
This whole process has an origin and is found in the optic glands of these animals.. This has been confirmed by a recently published study. Current Biology This leads to the conclusion that this gland, which is the equivalent of our pituitary gland found in the eyes of female octopuses, undergoes a sudden change during reproduction. The result of this hormonal roller coaster is changes in levels of progesterone, cholestanoids, and dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), the precursor to cholesterol.
“Cholesterol is important in the diet and in different signaling systems in the body,” says Yan Wang, a biologist at the University of Washington and lead author of the paper. produces stress hormones. “It was a big surprise to see it play a role in this lifecycle process as well,” he says.
Considering previous studies, It was found that if the optic gland was removed, the female lived longer after birth., researchers began to investigate what was behind the eyes of octopuses. So the team started to work. analyze the chemical production of optical cloth Two-spotted octopuses in California (octopus bimaculoides) after duplicating. For this, mass spectroscopy technique was used, as it can analyze the composition of biological samples.
It’s a matter of hormones
Researchers have identified three different pathways involved in the increase in steroid hormones.. The first, and most anticipated, produces pregnenolone and progesterone, the steroids often associated with pregnancy. However, the latter produces maternal cholestanoids (intermediate components of bile acids) and the third produces high levels of 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), a cholesterol precursor. “When they go through this progression process, they seem to go crazy right before they die,” says Clifton Ragsdale, professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study.
These three hormonal pathways discovered—seemingly independent—will allow us to continue to study this programmed suicide mechanism. The following studies will be conducted on the lesser Pacific striped octopus (Octopus chierchiae), which does not self-destruct after spawning in search of clues on how to avoid this tragic outcome.
Because as Wang explained, Although they have very different reproductive strategies, “the optic gland is found in all other soft-bodied cephalopods”. So this little gland, long underestimated by scientists, may be the key to better understanding the bizarre reproductive strategies of cephalopods. A behavior that also affects males, as females normally kill and devour them shortly after mating. If they manage to escape, they die on their own after a few months.
Reference work: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.198.4320.948
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