Octopuses, for the most part, are solitary creatures and sex happens with little romance or foreplay. When a male octopus is ready and feels the need, he comes out into the open and may flash with color, display enlarged suckers or spread the web between his arms. But that is the extent of the preliminaries, as he may then leap on a nearby female or reach around to her from a distance with his specialized baby-maker arm. Male cephalopods are equipped with a characteristic arm that is designed especially for sex and used to transfer a package of sperm to females. Female octopuses are not always willing partners, though, and are known to often reject suitors. On rare occasions, multiple male octopuses may compete for a single female and more than one may try to mate with her at the same time. In that situation, eight arms might just come in handy. Because octopuses can be cannibalistic, small males must be wary when coming out into the open to mate — for them attraction truly can be fatal.
— A little more detail on octopus sex from an excerpt of Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime in Wired. Click through for more on cephalopods, featuring this fantastic note on the male nautilus: “They will apparently approach and try to have sex with just about anything that appears nautilus-like.”
