Are paralarval eyes open at hatching?

maryyx

Hatchling
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Feb 15, 2009
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I am a total newbie to studying octopus - but have always been fascinated by them. As background to writing a children's story - I'd like to know if the paralarva's eyes are open at the time of hatching, or if they are floating around sightless for awhile.

Also - I'd like to know if they push out of the egg case with arms/legs - with their head - or with everything.

Thanks
Mary
 
In the last few months I have had 2 different broods of small egged octos hatch out in my home aquarium. Yes, their eyes are open and for that matter their chromataphores (color changing skin cells) are already working and the babies color change when disturbed or agitated. If you check the "raising octos from eggs" sub- forum in the octo care section, you will see that I have posted a still pic and a small amount of video under "Aku's eggs." The photos were taken on by small stage microscope. I'm not sure how they push out of the eggs, the mom holed them up in a den out of site.

There are also large egged babies, which take longer to brood and don't have to swim around for a while, like the paralarval stage in small egged. Large egged babies hatch out like really tiny adults (but still bigger than small egged, which are about the size of a grain of rice), and begin life as benthic animals.

Again, if you look at that sub-forum, you will find links to large egged baby and my small egged baby experiences, where we try to post all the observations and pictures we can possibly get!
 
Thanks!

Thank you so much for your helpful reply! I'm going to head over to the other forum and check out your pictures.

I'm a bit confused about the site still, but learning my way around.

Mary
 
On an additional interesting note, there was a recent paper (unfortunately I have lost the link) that studied cuttlefish hatchlings. The study involved having live food swim in sight of the growing young to see if they would recognize it more quickly than eggs not exposed. The embryos shown the crabs did show a definite difference and preferred crabs to other foods growing up. The control group did not show the crab enthusiasm. One of the things that makes the study particularly intresting is the difficulty in getting new hatched cuttles to eat.
 

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