Fair warning: this is the most depressing and magnificent story in the entire ocean. If Dostoevsky had been a mollusk, this is exactly what he would have written about.

Octopus sex is not pleasure. It is ritual suicide.

1. The Male Exit (Kamikaze)

The male octopus lives in constant paranoid fear. His main problem is that the female is usually larger, stronger, and always hungry. To her, he’s not so much a “beloved” as “lunch with sperm delivery.”

That’s why he has a special arm. The hectocotylus. Essentially, a penis that grew where a tentacle should be.

He stuffs this arm with spermatophores (packets of genetic material), sneaks up on the female, and - keeping maximum distance (to avoid being eaten) - shoves this arm into her mantle cavity.

In some species (like the argonaut octopus), the male decides not to risk it at all. He simply tears off his penis-arm and it swims to the female on its own. An autonomous sex drone.

After the deed is done, the male doesn’t go grab beers with his buddies. His self-destruction program kicks in. He stops eating. He becomes decrepit, loses coordination, and quickly dies - or gets eaten by something. He’s spent material.

2. The Female Exit (The Martyr)

But what happens to the female - that’s true horror.

She finds a cave. Lays tens of thousands of eggs. Weaves them into garlands. Hangs them from the ceiling.

And sits down to guard them.

This period lasts from a month to a year (for deep-sea species).

The entire time she doesn’t eat. At all.

She only fans the eggs with fresh water from her siphon and cleans them with her tentacles.

She slowly digests herself. First the fat burns away. Then the muscles. She fades, loses color.

At some point, driven mad by hunger, she may start gnawing off the tips of her own tentacles. But she doesn’t leave her post.

The most horrifying part is that this isn’t just exhaustion. It’s a chemical program. She has an “optic gland.” As soon as the eggs are laid, this gland releases hormones that shut down digestion and trigger aging. If you surgically remove this gland in a lab, the female abandons her eggs, starts eating, and lives for a long time.

But nature has programmed her for death.

3. The Finale (Orphans)

The moment the tiny octopuses hatch from the eggs, their mother dies. Usually she uses her final siphon breath to push them out into the ocean.

Her corpse falls to the bottom and is immediately devoured by crabs and fish.

Where’s the tragedy?

Octopuses are incredibly intelligent creatures. They can open jars, navigate mazes, use tools, recognize human faces. Their intelligence rivals that of a dog or primate.

BUT.

Because of this reproduction method, they have no knowledge transfer.

The mother dies before her children understand anything. The father is long dead.

No one teaches the young octopus how to hunt. No one shows it how to hide.

Every generation of octopuses is genius orphans. They start from absolute zero.

If octopuses lived longer and taught their young, they might have already built underwater cities and launched their own Voyager.

That’s the story.