In fact, from an energetic point of view, the main metabolic energy used by cephalopods comes from protein metabolism (O'Dor and Wellls, 1987). In this sense, the results obtained in the present study demonstrate that protein characteristics have a strong influence on the destination of energy ingested in O. maya. Animals fed experimental diets ingested more energy than the octopuses fed the reference diet (Cr) suggesting that there are some components in experimental diets that stimulated an increment of the ingestion energy. Previous studies have shown that deficient food provoked an increment of ingested energy when that diet did not satisfy the energy requirement of O. maya