[link] Octopus's Olfaction for Reproduction

According to a new research, the octopus's olfactory system might have a strong role to the octopus's reproduction.

“They possess a well developed olfactory organ, but to date almost nothing is known” about how it works, write the authors of a new review paper on the topic, published online earlier this month in General and Comparative Endocrinology.

For most of its short life, an octopus focuses on getting food—and turning that food into body mass. Only in the last months (or in some cases possibly weeks or years), does an octopus’s interest turn to love—or reproduction, at least. Recent research suggests that somehow the olfactory organs are partly responsible in this switch from growing to reproduction. As it happens, the olfactory lobe in the octopus’s central nervous system is located near the optic gland, which as been implicated in sexual maturation—as well as the strange but inevitable phenomenon of post-reproduction rapid senescence.