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Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten

Some male octopuses tend to get eaten by their sexual partners, but male blue-lined octopuses avoid this fate with help from one of nature’s most potent venoms

Now, in a scientific first, Wen-Sung Chung from the University of Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues have found that one of these species, the blue-lined octopus ( Hapalochlaena fasciata), uses this same toxin during reproduction. Using behavioural experiments, the team observed how the male mounts the female and lands a targeted bite near her aorta to inject tetrodotoxin. “This is a great example of a co-evolutionary arms race between sexes, where a cannibalising large female is counteracted using venom in males,” says Chin-Chuan Chiao at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, who was not involved in the study.

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