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SkaveRat is addressing my original question: I’m asking if there is an advantageous reason for this phenomenon. You seem to suggest it’s a spandrel at best, and fair enough, that could be the answer. It probably is a spandrel, I also believe that.

However spandrels usually don’t reduce future chances or reproduction, and this one clearly does, so I was asking perhaps there is an advantage to this feature (not a spandrel then). Or at least an explanation for its existence from a genetic perspective, ie. the genes triggering the self destructing behavior are also the same ones responsible for a major survivability feature.

The reason behind spandrels existing can sometimes be explained other than “random”, as it happens with the human chin for example - apparently someone figured out it’s physically impossible for a chin not to appear if you are deforming maxillary bones to flatten into a face.

So far here nobody knows for sure about the octopus, and I gather it’s because science doesn’t yet have a consensus on the matter. But everyone has been quick to assure me it’s just random and that there isn’t anything else to it without any scientific backing.

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Transtronaut@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I suspect the responses you’re getting stem from the original phrasing:

what’s the point, evolutionarily, to self destruct after reproducing

The question has an implicit claim that there IS a point, which people are rightly pointing out is not necessarily the case (as you have acknowledged). It certainly is an interesting question to wonder if there could be some benefit anyway, so it would probably have helped to frame it that way.

Not saying anyone is required to meet any kind of bar in the level of discourse in a casual online forum, just an observation of cause and effect, for what it’s worth.

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- Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Fair enough
  
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a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It is definitely more successful than the previous strategy in one of the ancestors was (or else it wouldn’t have been selected for), and mutations that reduce the dementia and allow for more reproductive cycles seen to negatively influence reproduction in either fitness or number of the offspring or chance of successful reproduction, so the trait persists.

Since this is a numbers game, even miniscule differences in reproductive success (which isn’t clearly measurable in the wild) have a large impact on genetic drift.

Since the origin of the current behavior lies in the past, it might not be possible to see what evolutionary pressure induced the behavior in the first place.

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