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A recent article shared by The 1440 Daily Digest stated that a rare octopus nursery the size of a football field had been discovered off the coast of Costa Rica by a team of researchers.
The article ended with: “Among other peculiar octopus behaviors, new mothers undergo a hormonal shift that leads them into a spiral of self-destruction.” [1]
No stranger to spirals of self-destructive behavior, I was insanely curious about what scientists had discovered as it relates to a woman’s shifting hormones and what it could mean for us land-dwellers facing the next stages in life.
According to the Live Science site, “octopuses torture and eat themselves after mating.” Their optic glands, which function like the pituitary gland, begin to secrete steroid hormones, bile acid intermediates and 7-DHC — the build-up of which can also lead to self-injury in humans.
After reproduction and about eight to eleven days of caring for her fertilized eggs, the mother-to-be will therefore stop eating, “beat herself against a rock, tear at her own skin, even eat pieces of her own arms.” [2]
“Some of the mothers took to excessively self-grooming their bodies,” noted researchers Z. Yan Wang and Clifton Ragsdale of the University of Chicago in their report published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Rather than running the first pair of arms over the head and mantle, as is typical, these octopus moms groomed with all their arms, in somewhat of a flurry that created a “turbulent mass of entangled arms,” which was followed by “self-cannibalization of the arm tips or suckers.” [3, 4]
Ultimately, scientists don’t know the reason for the suicide mission, but it most likely serves to protect the babies from older octopuses who are cannibals by nature.
“The mother’s death ensures she will not consume her young.”
Admittedly, these signposts were all mini-triggers for me and my heart ached for these doomed creatures who would never get to see the miracle of their progeny’s birth.
But why?
Not having any children of my own, or even being of the same species, this information shouldn’t have felt so dramatically potent.
What about their fate caused so much sensitivity on the subject?
My initial reaction was quite simple: it was cruel.
This living being could not be trusted to control herself, so biology takes over and forces her to destroy herself before she can destroy the thing that matters most in the world: procreation.
It was for the greater good; by ending her one life, the life of the whole endures. A self-imposed martyrdom that many would likely take on if they had the choice, but instead, was thrust upon its prey who had no say in the matter and likely felt helpless in the experience of their own demise.
Robbed of her freedom to choose and the opportunity to overcome her own nature, this highly intelligent and once playful entity is left to suffer and die according to her design.
This is where my deep dive begins. But don’t worry, there is a happy ending lying at the ocean’s bottom.
First, I was oddly reminded of my first real downward spiral after the age of 40, which just so happened to coincide with the initial year of the pandemic and the globally life-altering Lockdown.
We’ll call this Exhibit A in the case of Mother Nature v. Past-Their-Prime Women.
I had been living paycheck to paycheck, was unmarried, had no such experience with terms like ‘paid time off’ or ‘vacation,’ and was facing the utter reality of my failure to achieve any of my personal dreams. So I did what any self-respecting Millennial would do: I wrote out all my goals on a piece of paper and manifested a job that would provide those things. Then, I drank. Heavily.
This was not a job I wanted; it was not a lifestyle I wanted. In fact, I hated everything about it. The only way I knew how to dig my heels in and do it anyway was to numb every instinct in me that told me to get the hell out of there — by drinking. A LOT.
This heavy drinking obviously led to a lack of quality sleep, increased my anxiety and depression, and did quite a number on organs like my liver. I itched a lot. Went to the hospital twice. And pretty much cried every day.
Eventually, I was introduced to a feeling I have never met before in my entire life: utter hopelessness. Despair had taken over and I didn’t see a way out of the rat race, there was no end to the suffering and no reason to fight it. I was going through the motions but the will to go on had been lost.
Or could it just have been replaced with the chemicals I was putting into my body and the toxic overload from the lack of being able to filter out or process such things due to a compromised immune system?
There is countless evidence to support the claim that improper or lack of sleep, nutrients, and oxygen in the body can lead to an overall deterioration of the mind, memory, and mood, leading to increased irritability and even suicidal thoughts.
Truly, if the brain believes it is slowly dying, all it can do is plot to remove the thing causing the intense suffering: in this case, the self.
Notably, when scientists removed the optic gland or impaired it from secreting the death-inducing hormones, the octopuses swam away from their young and lived another six months (that’s an additional half of their total expected lifespan).
Let’s move to Exhibit B: the tendency to smother everything we really care about.
Casually glazing over the fact the word itself contains in it ‘mother,’ I can’t help but admit that the habit really is reserved for things we love most in the world that are usually ‘born of’ ourselves, be they works of art, dream projects, children, or lovers we project a dependency on in order to derive meaning from.
I can literally feel myself embodying the same frenetic energy the octo-moms displayed when self-grooming: it’s not perfect, keep going, do more, more, more, more, faster, better, go, go, go. Always proving yourself, always anxious, always inferior, always behind, always on guard.
Could it be that our hyper-focus on the fate of something no longer under our control causes a cascade of what-ifs that overpower our ability to reasonably and simultaneously care for and let go of the things we love?
Is it no coincidence that in both species, the gland responsible for the regulation of this activity is behind the eyes, our direct sense of perception?
What if we were to ‘see’ things a little differently; let a little more light in; allow our gaze to shift to a wider outlook? Would this more relaxed view of the world quell or perhaps dissipate such sharp and unrelenting attacks of imposed pseudo-protection?
Next up, Exhibit C: Unbridled Self-Sabotage.
This is where the case takes a sharp turn in Mother Nature’s favor. Time and time again, I, and the rest of my gender and species, have proven that we cannot always control our emotional outbursts or primal urges in a given moment; that we can’t be trusted to unequivocally put the needs of “the bigger picture” ahead of our own.
And while in the American Justice system, we want to believe that each and every situation shall be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, the jury is instructed to refer to previously established ruling case laws to guide their deliberations, irrespective of whether or not they agree with those laws.
This means if society has determined that it is right for the Georges of the world to spare the Lennies of the world of its irreparable inevitability, then we as members of that society must allow Mother Nature to do the same and remove from the equation any unwitting subjects programmed to aid in its annihilation.
The question here becomes if all Lennies could be shown the implications of their self-sabotage before they commit those sins, would they be capable of course correction?
The defense submits Tom Cruise in Minority Report for ironclad proof of the possibility. (Sorry for the spoiler).
Before the gavel strikes and dooms us all to destruction to save ourselves from ourselves, a closing argument from the prosecution presents a light at the end of the coral.
As in all cases of the law of correspondence, one must first determine what subjects are being treated as equals and in what ways these subjects relate.
If we’re agreeing that these octopus moms are only ‘us’ in the sense of our tendency to self-inflict restrictions that prevent the burgeoning of love and joy and life, then do we not ultimately and unanimously also agree that this is the preferred outcome for our daily activities? Could we, instead of seeing Mother Nature as usurping our desires, see her as doing exactly as we asked?
Is there solace to be found in knowing that no matter what we do, no matter how hell-bent we are, or how bad or often we f**k up, we can’t actually ruin the goodness in our hearts? That what we actually want to happen is going to happen no matter what we might do to prevent or thwart it?
Death, in this case, is not the literal ending of one’s life. It’s the redemptive process we all go through many times in our lives in order for one way of being to give way to a new way of being.
We are the octo-moms and we are also the babies.
The question is not what are you willing to die for, it’s what are you willing to give up and who do you want to live as now?
You cannot destroy what is meant to be. You cannot ruin what is in your heart.
Nothing that happens occurs without your agreeing to it on some level.
Do we need to be mindful of what that is?
Absolutely.
But the choice is our own.
Mother Nature does not take over. She abides.
Go forth, then, vertebrates, and worry not.
Your fate is both completely unlike and exactly the same as our deep ocean-dwelling cousins.
May we learn from and appreciate every lesson they share.
Case dismissed.
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