MemeMachineGo!

Sexual size dimorphism and the single octopus:

The male blanket octopus faces a significant gender imbalance — he is just two centimetres long, while the female of the species can measure up to two metres. […] The male blanket octopus is, technically speaking, “the most extreme example of sexual size-dimorphism in a non-microscopic animal … such dimorphism is not seen in any other animal remotely as large”. […] The two-metre female weighs at least 10,000 times as much as the male, sometimes up to 40,000 times as much.

This reproductive arm, known as a hectocotylus, is tucked away in a white spherical pouch between its other arms. When males mate, the pouch ruptures, the penis injects sperm into the tip of the arm, the arm is severed, and passed to the female. It stays there until used to fertilise the female’s eggs, which can be weeks later.

And while the human post-orgasm is sometimes referred to as “the little death”, for the male blanket octopus the term takes on literal meaning. The male dies, but the female carries on, free to have sex with more males. “It’s kamikaze sex, effectively,” said Dr Norman. “They’ve found females with up to six male arms in the gill cavity.”

The word of the day is hectocotylus.