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octopus life extention

Joined
Mar 30, 2007
Messages
181
have any of you heard that you can extend and octopus's lifespan by well... you know... "fixing" them. i'm not considering doiing it of coarse. how would you even go about doing that?
 
Bob the kracken;93893 said:
have any of you heard that you can extend and octopus's lifespan by well... you know... "fixing" them. i'm not considering doiing it of coarse. how would you even go about doing that?

There's been some research that shows that if part of an octopus' brain is removed, it delays its reaching sexual maturity, and it lives a bit longer. However, I wouldn't really recommend doing brain surgery on your pet.

This sort of stuff is discussed a bit here:

Why the male dies after mating?

I think the part of the octopus brain I was thinking of is the "optic gland" as studied by Wells and Wells:

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/1/1

I seem to remember that removing the testis or ovary doesn't change the lifespan any, just makes the animal unable to reproduce when it does mature. I think in O. Vulgaris removing the optic gland increases the lifespan a bit, but it's taking one piece out of a complicated system. It's also worth noting that this work was done in fairly large octopuses by experts, and it's not clear how many octos even survived the brain surgery... I'd guess that removing parts of the brain of the bimacs and other small octos people keep as pets would be even harder and more likely to harm the animal.
 

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