The female lays her eggs in sticky strings that she hangs from the roof of her den. She guards them until they hatch as long as six or seven months. During this time she never eats or leaves the den. She dies after the eggs hatch into perfect miniature octopuses. Each one is smaller than your fingernail, but in just two years it may grow into another gentle giant.
New research suggests that giant octopuses just wanna have fun.
Scientists once thought that only big-brained animals such as birds and mammals indulged in play behavior. But in one study, when scientists offered a captive octopus a floating pill bottle, the octopus seemed to treat it like a toy. It squirted some water to move the bottle into a water current that circulated the bottle around the tank, back to where it started. It's hard to say exactly what color giant Pacific octopuses are because, like most octopuses and squid, they can change colors in a flash. When a giant octopus is resting, its skin looks smooth and nearly white, but when it is excited for example, when it spots prey it can blush brick red in just a few seconds, and its skin takes on a bumpy appearance.