A real Octopussy! Poison ready for love! Strange love! đ
"The octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, known as blue-ringed octopuses, wield one of the deadliest substances known to science. The tetrodotoxin in their venom is such a potent paralytic that a single bite from the palm-size cephalopods can kill a person. But for the octopuses, it’s just a sedative—one that males use to subdue their much larger mates ...
Sexual cannibalism is common in cephalopods. Females stop eating after laying their eggs and dedicate the rest of their lives to caring for and protecting their developing young. Until then, males are on the menu: Males are much smaller than females so must get up close to insert their specialized sperm-delivering arms, leaving them vulnerable to being eaten midmating. ..."
From the abstract:
"A variety of phylogenetically distant taxa, including flatworms, mollusks, amphibians, and fishes, use the deadly neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (TTX) for predation and defense. A well-known example is the blue-lined octopus, Hapalochlaena fasciata (Hoyle, 1886), which uses symbiotic bacteria to sequester TTX in its posterior salivary glands (PSG)2. When it bites, the TTX-laden saliva immobilizes large prey and has caused lethal envenomation in a few incidents involving humans.
Female blue-lined octopuses are about twice the size of males, which bears the risk of males being cannibalized during reproduction. Surprisingly, we found that the PSG of males is roughly three times heavier than that of females. Using laboratory mating experiments, we show that males use a high-precision bite that targets the female’s aorta to inject TTX at the start of copulation. Envenomating the females renders them immobile, enabling the males to mate successfully."
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