Octopus Life Spans

[kookerson]

Housing an Octopus sounds like a very cool hobby, I actually would like to get a dwarf. The only thing that really concerns me is there lifespan. Ive heard over and over that they have relatively short lifespans.......but, on average, how short are we talking here?

[DHyslop]

Well, the lifespan for the dwarf octo itself might be 6 months to a year, but there's no way to buy one to be sure of its age--you might have a couple of weeks or a couple months, but likely not more than that.

Even the bigger species that most of the 'serious' keepers have (bimacs, briareus, etc) don't live longer than a year, and usually considerably less.

Dan