Beverly Willis, Age 11, Of Rochester, N.Y., for her question:

How does an octopus have babies?

The snail lays her eggs and leaves them to fend for themselves. The clam and the oyster strew their eggs into the water to take their chances. These animals and most other mollusks are very careless parents who do nothing to tend their eggs or to protect and teach their young.

The octopus is a member of the animal phylum mollusca which includes the snails and clams, the slugs and oysters. Most of the mollusks lay their eggs and forget them, leaving them to take their chances in the hungry world around them. As a result, all but a few of the eggs and young fail to survive. They become food for the hosts of hungry hunters just waiting to devour them. In order to keep going, the mollusk animals must produce large numbers of eggs so that a few may survive to hand on life to the next generation.

The octopus is a mollusk without a protective outer skelton like those worn by snails and oysters. It is also unlike its mollusk relatives in other ways. For one thing, mrs. Octopus is a mother with some consideration for her offspring. She guards and protects her eggs from the hungry hordes of the sea.

An octopus has two parents, and the egg is formed from cells from both the mother and father. Mrs. Octopus lays her glassy eggs in ones or in grape like clusters of several hundreds or thousands. A mature female may lay 180,000 at one time. There are many species of octopus, and child care varies from species to species. The fathers take no part in care of the young, but most of the females are good mothers  up to a point.

As a rule, the mother lays her round, almost transparent eggs in a cluster. The large yolks of the glassy eggs are rich in nourishment, and they are stuck together to keep them from drifting into the hazardous water. Mrs. Octopus stays near to protect her precious young , and when hungry bandits approach she drives them away.

In some species it takes almost two whole months for the eggs to hatch, and all that time the devoted mother does not desert them. What's more, she does not take time off to go hunting for her own food. A mother octopus fasts until her eggs hatch. She leaves than when her newly hatched babies swim away to cope with life for themselves.

A baby octopus emerges from his egg as a miniature copy of his parents. He can swim and find food for himself from the moment he hatches into his watery world. The little fellow is a cephalopod, which means a head footed animal. His long arms or tentacles form a fringe around his neck. They are fitted with round suckers to grip his victims, and they can be used for swimming, walking on the sea floor and for stuffing food into his mouth.