Octopodes string their soft, translucent eggs up on overhangs of rock or coral. The females lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time and will stay to guard them against hungry predators until they hatch. This often takes so long that she begins to starve and some octopuses will eat their own arms to survive. Once her thousands of tiny offspring are hatched, they feed on microscopic organisms like plankton until they grow large enough to live on the sea floor as adults. The mother, often disabled, will generally be eaten by a predator once she leaves her lair because she has grown too weak to defend herself.
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