Scientists investigating this maternal death drive discovered the octopuses were simply obeying their optic gland, which runs between their eyes. In 1977, a psychologist removed the optic gland from fourteen female Caribbean two-spot octopuses, between the two iris-blue spots on either side of its head. When the glands were removed and the octopuses woke up after surgery, most of them abandoned their eggs. All of them began eating again, doubling their body weight from that shrunken, brooding state. Most of the mother octopuses doubled their life spans, living months after the moment the
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