Today is a video day since the news is the depressing same-old-same old. Instead, I found this amazing three-minute video of a deep-sea (“benthic”) octopus, Graneledone boreopacifica, who brooded her eggs for more than FOUR YEARS (to be precise, 53 months). That is by far the record for any animal, as the video says. (The previous record for any animal was 14 months.) Octopuses are smart, and I wonder if she got bored sitting in the same spot for all that time.
Do realize that she almost certainly had nothing to eat over that period.
As far as I know, this guarding/brooding behavior is known in all octopuses that have been studied, and the sad part is that after the babies hatch, the mother simply withers and dies. This means that females reproduce only once.
h/t: Matthew