Feeding and metabolic rate in<i>octopus</i>

Abstract

Feeding raises the metabolic rate of Octopus vulgaris. The increase in oxygen consumption has two distinct components. There is a progressive increase in routine uptake over the first three or four days of feeding following a period of starvation, which can end by doubling or trebling the standard metabolic rate; the effect is most marked in small animals. Superimposed on this rise in baseline there is a short‐term rise and fall, with a timescale of 6 hours or so, following each meal. The short‐term cost of assimilating crab flesh is in the region of 9 ml O2 g−1. Taken togeather and compared with the standard rate, and the cost of locomotion in search of prey, the short and long‐term increases that follow feeding mean that feeding state is overwhelmingly the most important determinant of the daily energy requirement of Octopus.