Octomom

A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Latif. I would like to pull up from the watery depths, a story of perseverance. It's a story of focus. It's a story of one little creature fighting, fighting to the extreme extent of its, every fiber of its being for the future of its progeny. Part of the thing I love about it is it's so far from anything you're reading about otherwise in the news. It feels almost like it's as far as you can get on planet Earth from your own personal drama, and it helps remind you how much more is out there that has nothing to do with you. That's Octomom, originally broadcast

• 0:45Speaker 00

  in 2020, but just as timeless as ever today. Hope you enjoy.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Wait, you're listening?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  You're listening to Radiolab.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Radiolab.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  WNYC.

• 1:06Speaker 04

  Rewind.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. This is Radiolab, and Danny McKeon.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Well, what do you got for me?

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, Robert, let me just get the levels on you.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm here.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  We've got Robert.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Robert!

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Maybe you can tell, tell, tell.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm sitting in on this one with Annie just because.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  As many of you know, he retired from Radiolab not too long ago, but I brought him out of retirement and back into the studio to sit in with me on this interview.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  We just sometimes pile on when it looks like it's going to be a candy fun thing to do.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  And second of all, I have a hero and a story that, I don't know, I just feel like it's exactly the kind of story that we all need right now at this moment.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Okay, let's go.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's start with our main character.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  Excuse me.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  This is our hero?

• 2:00Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  No, well, I mean, our main storyteller, I guess.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  My name is Bruce Robison, reaching out to you from KAZU at Monterey, California, California State University Monterey Bay.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Oh, you got it all in there.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  No, that was very well done. So Bruce is a deep sea explorer.

• 2:19Speaker 05

  And a Southern California beach kid who just kept going out deeper and deeper.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  These days, he works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and basically he and his team, they'll go out on a boat with a little remote sub that they drop into the water with a camera and see what they can see.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  It's really exciting because there are all of these cool animals.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  I'm just curious, like, did you just go out onto the ocean and then look down? I went, oh, or did, how does it begin, the story?

• 2:45Speaker 05

  Well, one day.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  This is back in April of 2007.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  We're on a ship called Western Flyer.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  They're on one of their runs checking out sea life, and they're just off the coast over this giant underwater canyon, the Monterey Canyon.

• 3:02Speaker 05

  Pretty much the same scale and scope as the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  There's an underwater Grand Canyon in Monterey Bay?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  And on this day, Bruce and his team drop a little robot sub down into the water.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  A little less than a mile down.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Which doesn't seem like a lot, but imagine going down the length of the Empire State Building.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  And then go down another Empire State Building.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  And then go down another Empire State Building, and then go down like maybe a few more floors, like maybe 10 more floors of that Empire State Building.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  That's, that makes me a little bit dizzy.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  The darkness is overwhelming. You can look up and say, well, maybe the surface is up that way, but the last little photons have given up.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  And yet,

• 4:07Speaker 05

  it is punctuated by sparkles and twinkles and flashes all around.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  The majority of animals that live there make their own light.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  And you can hear scratches and squeaks and thumps around you.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Oh, Bruce, I'm noticing that your chair is rather vocal. It seems like it's squeaking, unless that's Robert, is that you?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  That's my imitation of a ship at sea.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  It's not quite working for me. It sounds a lot like a chair.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  It's his fault. It's not mine. You're rocking.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Well, I'll try not, I'll.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Anyway, they're down there in the darkness, and they flick on this little headlight. And sweeping this cone of light around in front of them, they see the silty seafloor, a few rocky outcrops, when into that cone of light wanders.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  An octopus, moving towards the rock across the seafloor.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Our hero, using her arms to sort of pull and glide and roll herself along.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  She was kind of purply gray, dark, mottled. There was a crescent shaped scar on one arm and a circular scar elsewhere.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Cool, like tattoos.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, just so good sense of size. Can you fit her on your lap or could you wear her as a hat?

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Okay, the mantle, the roundy part, was as big as a healthy cantaloupe.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Oh, how long are the tentacles?

• 5:41Speaker 05

  Foot and a half long. They're very stretchy.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Ooh, okay.

• 5:44Speaker 05

  Anyway, about a month later, we went back and dropped down.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  A month later? You see an animal hitting towards a rock and you don't wait to see if she gets there because would that take too long or why?

• 5:53Speaker 05

  We weren't really focused on that. It was just an observation.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Anyway.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  When they went back in the robot sub, a month later.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  That same octopus was up on a vertical face on the rock, sitting on a clutch of eggs.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Her body covering the eggs, each of her arms.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Curled in a little spiral, tucked into position.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  How many babies was she sitting on?

• 6:13Speaker 05

  160.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Were they jelly bean sized or?

• 6:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good approximation.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And Bruce and his team were like, oh, this is great.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  We know within about a month when the eggs were laid.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  And they'd often wondered, like, how long does it take for octopus eggs to hatch?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Does science not know about the brooding period of octopuses?

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Not deep water ones.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Which was a totally different species of octopus and could have a totally different way of doing things, for all they knew.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  We know so little about life in the deep sea that something like this can be very illuminating.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Did you have a name for her other than like 1006-B?

• 6:56Speaker 05

  We just called her Octomom.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Octomom.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  So whenever they were out at sea and had time in their schedule, they'd toss in the robot sub, drop down.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  And have a look.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  At Octomom. They dropped down in May, and there she is, a little figure huddled on the rock. A month or so later, there she is again, sitting on her eggs and warding off predators.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  Crabs and shrimps on the rock. Who would have loved to chow down on her eggs?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  So let's say I'm a crab, and I see some lady sitting on 160 babies. So I figure my odds are pretty good that I can scarf at least six of them.

• 7:32Speaker 05

  Not a chance. She is vigilant and relentless.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Couldn't I bite her?

• 7:37Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Or what?

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, what happens if a crab bites her?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, or pinces her.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  She would squeeze the heck out of it.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Couple months after that, they're zooming in towards the rock and, oh.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  There she is.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Cleaning the eggs with an arm, like la, la, la, la, la.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  And you can see the baby octopus inside the egg after a while.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Next visit.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  Still there.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Couple months after that.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Um.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  There she is, same old spot.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  October, still there?

• 8:08Speaker 05

  You bet.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  November?

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Curled around her babies, cleaning them, protecting them.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  And it's now been around like six months, something like that. And Bruce and his team start to notice that she was changing.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  She became very pale. She clearly lost weight, and you could see over time that her eyes began to get cloudy. I say the human counterpart might be cataracts.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And according to Bruce, for an octopus, this is normal.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  Most octopuses that we know about do not feed while they're brooding.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  At all?

• 8:48Speaker 05

  At all.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Oh, she's, she's stuck to the rock with her jelly beans?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  She's there.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  That entire time?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, she hasn't moved.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  So that would mean that she was starving.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  And not just starving, but starving to death.

• 9:06Speaker 06

  Octopus moms die after they reproduce.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Who is this?

• 9:11Speaker 06

  Oh, this is Yan.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I know.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  I was like, I'll text it. Whatever voice is coming through the headphones.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  So Yan Wong.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  I'm an evolutionary neuroscientist.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  She's a postdoc at Princeton, but she did her PhD research on reproduction and death in the octopus. Now, she studied a shallow water species of octopus, which tend to have a very short life.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  Typically only lives for a year.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  Really?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  That's it for an octopus?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  I know. Isn't that crazy?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  That seems, I mean, there's all the, all the attention they get is being these brainy creatures.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  I know.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  And to think they're so ephemeral.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Now, the deep sea species like Octomom probably live a little longer than that. We don't actually know exactly how long. But Yan told me that all octopuses have a sort of similar life story. Like, when you're a kid, you're just growing.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  So you're just eating everything.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Then you hit puberty. You gotta find a mate that won't eat you. Apparently that's a big risk. And when you do finally find that mate.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  The male octopus reaches with one of its arms into the mantle.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  The big balloony part of his body.

• 10:19Speaker 06

  Reaches in there and removes a sperm packet.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  And he tucks it inside the female's mantle. Here you go. And that's it. That's their sex, which sounded a little dry to me.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Well, I once was describing this on a train, a commuter train to a friend of mine. And I suddenly noticed the train was completely silent. So, um.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  In a porn-like way or in a horror?

• 10:44Speaker 03

  In a total porn-like way. And a very curious.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  This is Tha Montgomery. She's the author of The Soul of an Octopus, as well as like 29 other books about animals. And one Valentine's Day at the Seattle Aquarium, she got to see.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Octo sex.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Let's see. The male might have been up in the corner.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Teeny digression here.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  And the female came out of the one tank and entered this tank and crawled towards him. As soon as he realized, my love has arrived. They both turned bright red and they flew into each other's arms and they covered each other with their suckers. 16 arms going on. And they're all very fast. But they stay together for a while afterwards. Sometimes hours. I mean, it was very romantic.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  The male often wrapped around the female.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  And frequently, they both turn white, which is the color of a relaxed octopus. So that's when they're having the cigarette.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Anyway, we can't know if that's what Octomom experienced. She is a different species after all. But what we do know is that once she used that sperm, that was the beginning of the end of her life.

• 12:06Speaker 06

  The female can essentially decide when she wants to fertilize her eggs. Because once she lays them, you know, she's not going to move them.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  So yeah, she has to go do all of her favorite things one last time before she switches over.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  Her last hurrah, her rum springer.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 12:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  But when she decides the time is right, she'll find a safe spot and lay her eggs.

• 12:30Speaker 06

  Then, as the eggs are about to hatch, she dies.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Now, the shallow water species of octopus that Yan studies, this sitting and taking care of your eggs phase doesn't last that long, only about a month. But with Octomom, since they knew virtually nothing about the species, the question was, how long would it go? How long would she sit on those eggs, not eating, slowly dying?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  How often? Are you visiting her every month or two or every three months?

• 12:58Speaker 05

  No, no, no. It was, it, there wasn't a regular pattern. This was sort of bootleg science. We were out there doing other things that, that we were supposed to do as part of our project up in the water column. And if we had a little extra dive time, we'd sneak down and, and check her out.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Which they did month after month after month after month.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  If you keep counting, how far does it go?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Well, let, let's say, let's say year one.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Year?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Year one, they drop down. She's looking pretty rough. And there are all these crabs crawling around. And they're scientists, but they're also kind of having a hard time watching this octopus suffer, for lack of a better word.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  And one of the things that we tried was we went down once and broke a couple of legs off a crab.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  With a robot, with the robot?

• 13:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. We have manipulator arms. We can do all kinds of neat stuff. So we broke off a couple of crab legs and offered them to her. She, she wouldn't have anything to do with it. We tried that, oh, two, three times.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And one time in year two.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Year two?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  They drop down. And they see that she is being circled by crabs.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Looking as though they were trying to mass and attack, if you will.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Like, how many?

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Three or four.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  She's, she's like very weak at this point. And these crabs are like circling her like you imagine with pitchforks at like around a week. At a stake or something.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Back, you devils.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  And Bruce and his team are like, oh, my God, like, what's gonna happen? You know, could this be the end?

• 14:38Speaker 05

  And, all right, so we, we couldn't hang around and, and.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Oh, man, you are not the kind of people. We would not hire you.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  If we were following somebody who was under attack by a group of crabs who had written, drawn a circle of death around her and said, no one shall pass, we would not go back upstairs. We would stay.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  We had other things on our agenda.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Oh, come on. They just heard, they, they, they grabbed a crab last time. Just like shoo them away with the arms.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  That's what I knew. But they would come right back. I mean, they can't guard her.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  But they leave her there in the dark, being circled by crabs. Oh.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  That was at the beginning of a week-long trip.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  So they're out at sea doing their research. And all the while, they're thinking, what happened to Octomom and the crabs?

• 15:22Speaker 05

  So on, on our way back home, we thought, let's go check. Let's see how things are.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  They drop in the sub.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  They drop down. They drop down, down, down, down, down.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Biting their nails.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  As we try to find our way into the rock. And we're searching, searching, searching.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  And then there, a white blob in the darkness.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  It's like, ah. Okay, good. There she is, there she is, still there.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  And there are no crabs around her anymore.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  But there were crab parts all over the seafloor below her.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So she killed them?

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  So she, in her weakened state, torn them apart with her arms.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  All the folks in the control room on the ship and the pilots were all going, yay!

• 16:04Speaker 02

  So you left for a week. And during that time, she fought like the battle of her life.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Missed the whole thing.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  And they are counting the eggs every single time. And she is still at 160.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  We never saw any evidence that anybody had picked off one of the eggs.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Not a one?

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  This is heroic.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  It is heroic. She was wasting away and would eventually have to die. But it would have to be timed right with the hatching of the babies. Because if she were to lose her grip and drift off of the eggs, then a crab could come and just, you know, have a huge brunch. I mean, there was this tension of her holding on until.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  They were ready. Yes.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Well, doesn't it seem to you like there's like people like, you know, say, I'm going to be dying tonight, but I'm going to wait for Johnny to come home. And then Johnny bursts through the door and say, look and exchange a glance, and then mommy dies. It sort of feels a little like that.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Let's move on to year three.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  What?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  She's still there.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Three years?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  This is.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  I know, she's getting worse.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  This is horrible and amazing at the same time.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  She has not eaten anything there, like aghast. She is just like this titan. Year four, we move on to year four. Like, it's just like unbelievable time. Let me give you a sense of like what is happening. So 2007, that's when they saw her. Boris Yeltsin dies. First iPhone release for sale in the USA. Big moments. 2008, the economy crashes. Obama is elected. Like, these huge things are happening. Right up, right upstairs from her. She's just still doing that same thing. 2009, Usain Bolt breaks the world record for the 100-meter dash.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Bitcoin? I think Bitcoin happened somewhere in there.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Bitcoin, okay. 2009, Michael Jackson dies.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  2010, those Chilean miners are rescued after 69 days.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  I don't know if you remember that. They're trapped underground.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Of course, wow.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Haiti has a huge earthquake, the worst they've ever had in 200 years. 2011, we're moving on to 2011 now. The Arab Spring.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Same-sex marriage is legalized in New York State. Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, and Osama Bin Laden all die.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  All the while, Octomom has been sitting there, withering, but killing crabs that come for her babies.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Like, not eating, but somehow remaining vigilant?

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Just seems so crazy to me. Like, why would, why would evolution make an animal that needs to gestate her babies that long?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Well, we don't know. Bruce and Yan both said that maybe it's because it's so cold down there that everything happens more slowly. Or maybe you need super-developed babies because it's such a harsh environment. But basically, it's still a mystery. Like, they don't even know if Octomom is like this crazy freak of nature or if she's ordinary. Like, she's the only octopus of this species that anyone has ever watched do this. But my question was how? How can she survive this? Like, how can she just sit there not eating for four years and not just, like, just die?

• 19:25Speaker 06

  It's just a totally bizarre thing, right?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  It sounds like magic.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Lucky for us, this is exactly what Yan studied for her PhD. So when we come back from a quick break, together with Yan, we're going to find out how she does it and how far she can go.

• 19:45Speaker 03

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• 22:23Speaker 04

  Jed, Radiolab, back with Annie McEwen and Octomom.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  So before the break, we had landed on the very simple question of how. How does Octomom manage to stay alive and defend her eggs, not moving, no food, for over four years?

• 22:41Speaker 06

  Right, so we just didn't know.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Well, Yan says the answer lies in a very peculiar fact about the octopus's brain, which helps her pull off these last few deeply essential beats of her life.

• 22:56Speaker 06

  If we were to think about the nervous system as, say, like, an orchestra.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  To understand how this works, Yan says you can think of all the different parts of the octopus's brain as different sections in an orchestra.

• 23:16Speaker 06

  You know, like, the brass is going to take care of, like, vision or something like that.

• 23:26Speaker 06

  Or, you know, the strings are taking care of motor functions and things like that.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Maybe the basses regulating heartbeat, the woodwinds taking care of memory. And as she swims along, living her octopus life, the whole orchestra is playing, all the instruments doing their job.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  But as she lays her eggs,

• 23:56Speaker 02

  there's a shift.

• 23:57Speaker 06

  A shutting down of processes that are normally functioning to keep the body going.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Every instrument in that orchestra starts to hush.

• 24:09Speaker 06

  Everybody going quiet.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Except

• 24:17Speaker 02

  there's this one section of the orchestra.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, the optic glands. These are like two really tiny, they're kind of the size of, you know, a grain of rice.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  They sit right between her eyes.

• 24:30Speaker 06

  They have their solo at this point.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  And would that be the opera singer? Or who is that? Who is everyone quieting to hear?

• 24:38Speaker 06

  Well, let me think about this. It would not be, you know, a very common instrument. It's not a huge part of the brain. So it wouldn't really be a string. I don't think it would be like a wind instrument. Or maybe it would be a weird one, you know, like a bassoon or something like that, one where there's just one or two in a full orchestra.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Okay, I like that. So as all the other parts of the nervous system begin to drop away, the bassoon, these tiny grains of rice, have their moment.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  They're playing a very complicated chemical song that Yan is only just beginning to piece together. But she knows that part of the work they're doing is triggering a bunch of different chemicals.

• 25:31Speaker 06

  Things like steroids and it's insulin that enable it to stay alive without additional food intake.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  And so, all the while she's down there, years and years, being visited again and again by this robot. On the outside, she looks like a very old lady.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Pale skin, cataracts, flabby muscles. A little pale blob in the darkness, all alone.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  But on the inside,

• 26:16Speaker 02

  she's very much alive. Alive in this incredibly centered, focused way.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Year after year after year after year, she's playing her heart out.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Bruce, I just want to remind you about the chair thing. I am.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  No, no problem, no problem.

• 26:56Speaker 05

  All right. Dylan's offered me a better chair. Let's say a more silent chair. So let me pick up my butt out of this one.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Move it over to another one. Thank you, Dylan.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Did you have, did you have moments where you were like out buying eggs, bicycling, you know, cleaning the car? And just had this moment like, oh, she's there. I know exactly where she is. She's doing her job. Like, these little moments of you living your life and her just constantly working as a mother?

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I thought about her all the time.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  Okay, so we are at year four? Or is that where we are?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  So we're at year four and a half.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  Four and a half years.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Is that the world record for longest brooding period on planet Earth?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  We had, we had been there a month before, and she was still there, looking pretty haggard, I've got to say. But she was hanging in there. And then, one day,

• 28:12Speaker 05

  we dropped down and we're flying in towards the rock.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  He's watching the screen up on the ship, just seeing darkness.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Then there's the rocky outcrop. There's her spot.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  And she wasn't there. We couldn't see her.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  What does, what does that mean? Does that mean?

• 28:39Speaker 05

  We knew we were at the right place. We could see the, the patch on the rock. And there were all of these tattered egg cases just in the spot where she had been.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Tattered egg cases means that the babies had been born?

• 28:53Speaker 05

  Well, the first thing we did was search. Are there babies on the rock? Are the babies still here? Or did any of them survive? Or was it some sort of apocalyptic demise at the hands of all those hungry-looking crabs?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  So they're frantically sort of searching around the rock, searching and searching and searching.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  And then they begin to see

• 29:19Speaker 02

  little babies that are her species. And they see a baby here and a little baby there.

• 29:25Speaker 05

  Little octopuses crawling around.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  They'd been feeding and growing. And it was pretty clear that they were hatchlings from that clutch of eggs that we had observed.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Do they look like her? Like all the same, well, there's the crescent, the crescent shape and the...

• 29:44Speaker 05

  Sadly, no. And they were quite a bit smaller.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  But it was clear that they were the same species.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  And did you see her?

• 29:56Speaker 05

  No, I'm certain that she had been consumed by some scavenger.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. But you just want, you just want to give her a moment, just to see it.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, we kind of asked Bruce, like, can you help us imagine what that moment might have been like for her?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Since you don't know, because you missed it as usual, the actual big moment.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  I must have gone out for a hamburger or something.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Could you just, in your mind's eye, imagine the last moment here? Like, was she dusting the eggs? Or were the eggs beginning to hatch?

• 30:37Speaker 05

  We suspected she stayed there until the last one had hatched.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  You mean watching them?

• 30:42Speaker 05

  Maybe not watching them, but feeling them, guarding them.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  They are, they are devoted moms.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  So she would feel this activity that was new underneath her and then know that it was time to finally let go.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Right. Okay, relax, mom. It's over. You did, you did your job.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  So cool. It's like handing off the baton of life.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I love thinking about this story right now because we're all like, kind of, I don't know, just needing to like, hold on. There's this like, sense of holding on.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  And waiting, and being patient, and just like, I don't know, having faith and that kind of thing, you know, just kind of like, being still and holding on. That she is just like, giving us such a great model for it.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Wow. It's, you know, it would, uh, hold on one second. I have to just put it into this madness.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Emil, Tej, don't come in here. I'm working.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Um, you know what I think about is the...

• 31:58Speaker 02

  What?

• 32:00Speaker 04

  It's so, it's so interesting. This is like the, uh, this is like, the absolutely wrong soundtrack to the story that you're telling.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Oh, the kids.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  You're talking about a mother sort of lovingly suffering and then dying on behalf of her jelly beans. And I have these kids who are just like, literally running around like savages right now because they're stir crazy. Um, no, you know what I think? I think about it like, it's so beautiful and heroic and poignant. But then I think about like, she's not telling, like, if you take the story away and you just imagine her experience, she's in the darkness for five years. And like, I wonder if she, I wonder, she has no conception of anything except, I had that somehow, the disconnect between the experience she's having and the story we're telling about it is everything that I need to think

• 32:51Speaker 04

  about right now. Because we're all trying to protect our jelly beans in a way. But, uh, but then if you think about the experience of that, it can feel frightening and lonely and dark, you know?

• 33:31Speaker 04

  Thanks, Annie.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  This story was, uh, reported and produced by Annie McEwen with musical help from Alex Overington. Thanks to Kyle Wilson for playing the, uh, sexy saxophone for us. And a very big thank you to our bassoon player, Brad Balliet, who provided the soundtrack for Octomom's darkest hours and finest moment. And of course, thanks to Bruce.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, we've kept you, so we should let you go.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you so much, Bruce. I really appreciate it. Um, yeah, again. I think we got everything. So, yeah, your squeaky chair and all, it was perfect.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't want to do, have him like, rock on the chair a tiny bit?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Uh, oh.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Maybe you should. Might be useful.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  In terms of mixing purposes.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  All right. I'll, I'll wheel the other chair over and...

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yes. And then just doodle with your body.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  A little dance routine.

• 34:25Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Oh, I guess, yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  So don't say anything, just make squeaks.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Sort of reminds me about what she, she might hear under the water. Whales communicating.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fine.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening. Radiolab will be back with you next week.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Maya, and I'm from London. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Saurav Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sambak is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nainas Ambandan, Matt Keelty, Mona Mordgaucka, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Natalia Ramirez, Joanna Strogatz, Anisa Vitsa, Ariane Wack, Molly Webster,

• 36:05Speaker 03

  and Jessica Young, with help from Blora Karpas and Maya Appleby-Malamed. Our fact checkers are Nora Belblydia, Hillary Elkins, Rachel Gross, Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, and Sophie Semai.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.