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Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten
- bell-cot 2y agoNote to self: Be sure to die with a sufficiently well-buffed Karma to avoid rebirth as a member of Hapalochlaena fasciata.
- okokwhatever 2y agoFunniest joke ever in YN
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kennysoona 2y agoIt's just how they make sex more interesting. Most only live a year or two, and you only live once.
- mrlonglong 2y agoThe alien in the TV series the resident alien is descended from octopii.
- asveikau 2y agoThe plural of octopus is octopuses. But if you want to sound more latin, octopus is a third declension noun, and those have nominative plurals that tend to end in -es, rather than the second declension which ends in -us for singular or -i for plural. Third declension nouns whose nominative form ends in -s also tend to change their root's final consonant when you change the suffix. (Eg. opus -> opera. That one doesn't end in -es because it's neuter.) All this to say, the latin plural of octopus is octopodes.
- metalman 2y agoVS, octapie, which is what the females are dreaming of, instead of getting envenomated lively bunch, reclusive, come in all sizes, from extra tiny, to back off quick, and a whole other complex octapoid lifestyle I regularly interact with spiders, wolf spiders bieng my favorites by far, sometimes called jumping spiders, they are sight hunters and dont build webs, and seem to stay in a certain teritory for days or weeks, before moving on
- AngryData 2y agoYeah sure but we don't speak latin, English is a hodgepodge of a dozen other languages, both dead and alive, and the only value that determines whether something is correct in english or not is common usage. And octopi is used often enough to not really be incorrect. You might as well be complaining that "ain't" isn't a word despite it clearly being so ever since Dickens used it.
- koakuma-chan 2y agoWhat does ain't mean?
- mrlonglong 2y agoIsn't. Ain't is UK.
- asveikau 2y agoAin't is also common in the US, but is stigmatized. In the US, it is regional to the east coast, both north and south. It is also common in African American speech.
- asveikau 2y agoThis is a specific case of trying to imitate the rules of Latin, incorrectly. Another one that we misunderstand a lot is virus. It looks like the typical second declension thing ending in -us. It is actually a rare categorization of word, the 4th declension. But it is a common occurrence in languages that when rules are complicated and confusing that they get generalized to simpler patterns from elsewhere in the language. Romance languages have done that to Latin too! I gave an example of opera being the plural of opus. A lot of romance languages have reinterpreted neuter plurals as feminine singulars, because of that -a suffix.
- traceroute66 2y agoPortia labiata spiders are also fun: "Females try to kill and eat their mates during or after copulation, while males use tactics to survive copulation, but sometimes females outwit them." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_labiata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_labiata
- amelius 2y ago> The conspicuous main eyes provide vision more acute than a cat's during the day Curious how the spider processes all this information with their tiny brain ...
- diamondfist25 2y agoTiny brain with 8 eyes…
- undebuggable 2y agoI was always wondering if brains all these spiders and flies have the capability to reconstruct the surroundings in 3D like mammals do, or their sophisticated eyes are only light and motions sensors. Observing e.g. fly evading flyswatter which resembles random walk, it's likely the latter.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoTheir eyes are not going to have evolved past the point of providing any incremental benefit, and a fly is after all a simple critter who's main concern is finding a pile of shit to eat, and avoid being swatted by a cow's tail. I'd guess their eyes (& visual system) are perhaps better regarded as crude visual sensor rather than anything much like the visual system of an animal that benefits from recognizing whether that shitty ass belongs to a cow vs a tiger.
- amenhotep 2y agoIn general it may be the latter. Portia spiders in particular, though, will observe a target, observe their surroundings, then navigate a complex path around and through structures that block their vision of the target to reach a destination that will allow them to attack it. Suggesting very much that they form some kind of model of their surroundings, plan a path through it, and remember that path.
- swayvil 2y agoI thought everybody did this.
- HenryBemis 2y agoIf you mean that forced sex/rape is prevalent in nature, then yes, there are many species that use this method/approach. If you want to make humor about rape, I'll refer you to what Ricky Gervais said on the matter (look it up).
- wizzwizz4 2y agoI can't find what Ricky Gervais said on the subject (which I imagine was recent), only news articles about an Edinburgh show he did in 2009. (We're off-topic, but) I'd appreciate a link or quotation.
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- microtherion 2y agoTalk about "toxic masculinity"…
- yubblegum 2y agoMore like a solid prenup, hey?
- bladeee 2y agoVenomous masculinity
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- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoWell, when you're going up against "cannibalistic femininity", it seems less toxic...
- amelius 2y agoI wonder how human society would evolve if this were the case for us.
- slowtrek 2y agoIt's not worth wondering. A core tenant of evolution is that it's a random mutation, and that some random mutation is favorable. It's very Life of Pi, you have to make your own truth out of this because it won't make sense.
- somenameforme 2y agoWe'd go extinct. Spiders can have hundreds of offspring per 'birth.' Humans have, on average, about one. You need each woman to have at least 2 children for populations to stay the same. Which, in this case would mean you'd need at least 2 men. An evolution (or artificial 'population management') where males are 66% likely or otherwise born at a 2:1 ratio wouldn't work because then you need each woman to have 3 children to create a sustainable population, meaning you need an even higher ratio of males - and so on recursively towards infinite male:female ratios.
- amelius 2y agoI mean, it all depends on what you want to assume. You can assume that a woman in this case will have more offspring, and continue reasoning from there.
- mrfinn 2y agoIf? never been married, right? PS. You may think of your credit card as your "venom", so you won't get eat alive in a divorce process lol
- throw7383839 2y agoYou mean if a woman could destroy a man for (not) having sex? Men would avoid sex, cohabitation, marriage and families. For society it would mean less babies, demographic and economical decline.
- aucisson_masque 2y agohow does female cannibalizing the male fit into darwin evolution theory ? that evolution should make reproducing less efficient, either the male is dead before he finish reproducing with the female or at least, he is not able to reproduce with other females. Yet it seems to be working just fine with other species of octopuses where the male get eaten.
- amelius 2y agoMaybe the female can use the proteins for her offspring, and there are more offspring to offset the lost male.
- RajT88 2y agoPresumably the female acquires calories with which to grow her brood. "Unable to reproduce with other females" is probably relevant. The relative size of different genders has a lot to do with if a species is polygamous or monogamous. Larger males the former and larger females the latter.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoYes, although the fact that the male has evolved this venomous defense seems to indicate that benefit of maintaining diversity in the gene pool (maybe good genes even, if he had to compete to mate) might outweigh the benefit of being a quick snack for a post-coital hungry female.
- sebzim4500 2y agoThe effect of natural selection is that the genes that propagate most are the ones that maximize the probability of that gene appearing future generations. There is no direct evolutionary pressure for an individual to behave in ways that benefit the species in general.
- lolinder 2y agoYes, because there is no concept of "species" in nature, species is an arbitrary grouping we humans apply to the individuals and genetic lines that are actually involved in natural selection. The female's genes are most likely to get passed down many generations if the males she mates with have genes that enable her male children to survive long enough to reproduce. Once a species gets into a state where females make a habit of eating the males during copulation, it can't readily evolve out of that state, because a female that is less aggressive will mate with males who can't succeed at mating with other females, leading to that line dying out. Sexual cannibalism is a local maximum. So if at any point in the past there were evolutionary pressure that made cannibalism beneficial to the genes, we would expect to see it stick around until there's sufficient pressure against cannibalism to allow selection away from that local maximum.
- bdangubic 2y agosaw an episode of dateline like this - but humans :)
- riidom 2y agohttps://archive.is/OO99Q https://archive.is/OO99Q
- bitbasher 2y agoThis sounds incredibly illegal.
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- tim333 2y agoWe need to extend the legal system to the animal kingdom! There are millions of bacteria getting away with things.
- helf 2y ago[dead]
- blogabegonija 2y ago[dead]
- stevenfoster 2y agoDisappointed that the author of the article has a German name but didn’t coin a long single German word for this.
- rbanffy 2y agoI guess becoming venonmous is evolutionarily easier than becoming better lovers.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThe female protects the eggs on her own and then invariably dies, so there's not a lot of reason to invest in a relationship.
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- acuntcalleddan 2y ago[dead]
- AraceliHarker 2y agoIn human terms, is this male octopus behavior comparable to drugging someone and then raping her?
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoYou are thinking Sharks. They may even eat the female by accident. For this octopus, it is more like making a prenuptial agreement, or gifting assets to family, or a public limited company.
- SoftTalker 2y agoNo. There's no concept of rape among animals.