Both male and female octopuses undergo a “madness” process just before they end their lives. This is perhaps one of the strangest forms of death that has yet to be explored.
Octopuses are creatures that have been orphaned from a very young age. This is because after the mother octopus lays her eggs, she begins to stop eating and violently self-destructs her own body. A few months later, the male octopus meets the same fate.
After mating, both male and female octopuses go through a process that leads to their demise after about two months (Photo: Getty).
The short and harsh life of the octopus has long posed significant questions for scientific research. In 1944, scientists first hypothesized that the mating process somehow triggered the “self-destruct” button within these creatures. However, this argument remains controversial and has puzzled scientists for decades.
Now, nearly 80 years later, this vague hypothesis has finally been clarified. Recent studies have discovered that mating appears to alter some important biochemical pathways related to cholesterol into different hormones in octopuses.
“We know that cholesterol is vital from a dietary perspective, as well as in various signaling systems of the body,” explained Z. Yan Wang, a molecular biologist at the University of Chicago.
“It is involved in everything from cell membrane flexibility to hormone production, but it is surprising to see that it also plays a role in the life cycle of octopuses.”
By studying the stage when an octopus is about to “commit suicide”, which occurs after mating, researchers observed higher activity levels in certain genes controlling sex hormones, insulin hormone, and cholesterol metabolism.
Both male and female octopuses undergo a “madness” process just before death.
All three of these molecules inadvertently interfere with the central nervous system of the octopus, leading to signals that activate predestined death. Or perhaps simply the accumulation of these molecules in the octopus’s body causes them to perish, similar to what occurs in humans.
Notably, it seems that both male and female octopuses experience a “madness” process just before death. It is even more fascinating that researchers have also found similar gene structures in some rodent species.
According to Wang, this is a very interesting discovery to see the similarities between animal species with completely different biological mechanisms and living environments.
In the future, Wang and her colleagues hope to conduct further analysis to uncover why octopuses have evolved to endure such a painful death, occurring in this strangely arranged cycle.
