Bruce Robison told Radiolab that Octomom fended off the crabs and shrimp that wanted her eggs by squeezing any attacker. In her second year of brooding, his team saw three or four crabs circling her and had to leave for a week-long trip. When they returned, the crabs were gone and crab parts lay on the seafloor below her. The team counted the eggs on every visit and never saw one taken.
“We never saw any evidence that anybody had picked off one of the eggs.” Bruce Robison · at 16:15 — open in the transcript →
Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Radiolab (2026-10-23). Read the whole episode summary →