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There has long been an effort to minimize the significance of emotions and intelligence in other species. The need to feel superior seems to be in our nature. Valuable research has been withheld for fear of ridicule. Pet owners can attest to the emotional and intellectual capacity of their dog, cat, bird. Indeed with their big eyes, curious nature and famously moody characters – one recent study found they deliberately throw rubbish at other octopuses – the creatures can seem strangely human. First of all, giant Pacific octopuses have been living near my home all my life in Seattle, a port city. I have walked and partied on Seattle’s beaches all of my life and ate seafood at restaurants with beachside tables on Seattle’s piers. The Seattle Aquarium has a few octopuses, and some of them are Youtube stars. Secondly, the Aquarium catches them in Elliot Bay, just off the pier where the Aquarium was built. Third, the local diving clubs see them all of the time, posting videos of them, including one video of baby octopuses hatching from eggs, while their dying mother waves them on. The babies are cute as buttons, literally, being the size of tiny pearl collar buttons. Mom octopuses die shortly after the babies begin hatching because the moms starve themselves on guard duty while the eggs grow after being laid. Last year, the UK established the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, with octopuses among the animals covered.
To summarise this relatively long/ranty review: if you're a reader starting out with the assumption that octopuses are non-sentient cephalopods with no behavioural variation or cognitive function – prepare to have your mind blown. However, if you're a reader, who, like myself, takes sentience, variation and cognition (all to varying degrees) in animals for granted, but has fallen for the all hype around what is often presented as the almost mystical intelligence of octopuses, prepare to be disappointed. Considering the information provided in this book, the life cycle of the octopus and it's physiology are really what make it stand out as a fascinating, unique animal, and not it's supposed “intelligence” and “personality”. Also, if you're at all concerned about animal ethics, prepare to be disturbed by the sinister postscript on “Keeping a Captive Octopus”. Even though this is related to squid and not octopuses, some may have a visual language on their skin to share information with fellow squid; in other words, they’re “living books.” There are also details about other residents from the Aquarium: Myrtle the turtle, the Sunflower starfish (I don’t recall the name, if it has one) and various other fish. There are a lot of details too about the stuff and volunteers working at the Aquarium; if I were them, I would have mind so many personal details to be used in the book. But that’s just me.The beauty of Godfrey-Smith’s book lies in the clarity of his writing; his empathy, if you will. He takes us through those early stirrings in the seas of deep time, from bacteria that sense light and can taste, to cnidarian jellyfish, the first organisms to exhibit nervous systems, which he describes wonderfully: “Picture a filmy lightbulb in which the rhythms of nervous activity first began.” The ocean itself became the conduit for evolution; we feel a magnetic attraction to the vast waters that gave us birth because we still carry the sea inside us. “The chemistry of life is an aquatic chemistry. We can get by on land only by carrying a huge amount of salt water around with us.” But (and you knew this was coming), I don't think aquariums should catch or pay to catch animals from the wild for their exhibits. Even though the people in the book cared about their charges, in reading you could see how the conditions for the animals was sometimes cruel (Kali in particular). If you do that against an immobile surface, the octopus arm will crawl tip first away from the mouth, as each bit of substrate below it is passed towards the mouth,” says Scheel. There is some information on other species in the sea. Some fascinating facts and tidbits to wow you with the gifts of the sea. FLORIDO: Thanks for joining us. Marcellus - he's this octopus, but he's a real curmudgeon stemming from his life in captivity. And yet he's charming. He's really funny. And we should note that he's not a talking octopus to the humans in your book. He's just an octopus in a fish tank. But you take us into his mind. Why?
But octopuses do some things very differently. Take sex: while humans get up close and personal, octopuses do it at arm’s-length.FLORIDO: And he's sort of watching these humans outside of the - you know, on the other side of the fish tank, sort of bumbling around. And he's sitting there, scheming. The author makes reference to many scientific names and even explains why a genus and why species- so, it's a good book for a young aspiring scientist. Their eyes have no blind spot. These wide-angle eyes have a panoramic view and each eye can swirl independently. New evidence indicate they can see with their skin as well. (Maybe they wrote the lyrics for Every Breath You Take.)
Montgomery's love of octopuses was so intense that it even got to me. I didn't think I could tear-up reading about the death of an octopus but these eight armed molluscs have so much personality and alien intelligence they seem rather like ET in the movie. Unfortunately there are rather a lot of octopus deaths in the book since they only live about 3 or 4 years. Wondering if he is “entirely real in their watery world”, and not “one of those ghosts who does not realise they are a ghost”, the author hypothesises that this “chromatic chatter” is a subtle kind of communication. We now know that speech isn’t needed for complex thought; perhaps these animals, so incredibly sensate, learning from each other’s behaviour, shifting in shape and colour, are more social than we ever suspected. Yet what they might know or feel still eludes us. Right now there is a special exhibit on at the NEAQ of octopuses, squid and other tentacled creatures. I can hardly wait for my next day off! I suppose that's my major problem here: this whole book feels self-indulgent on the part of the authors. They write about themselves as if they are messiahs of octopus knowledge. The way they ended the book made me roll my eyes til they hurt, then throw the book with disgust into a pile for Goodwill.Are there interesting facts here? Yes.. there are. But the way that many scientific "facts" are presented makes me uncomfortable. It is not uncommon to read statements along the lines of "This experiment didn't work, but here is my assumption why" or "We don't have the data or observations to support this claim, but it's probably true." If you're going to present yourself as a scientific authority on a topic, just leave the speculation at home. It's unnecessary and weakens the trust in the authors. Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.
Octopuses are incredibly intelligent. I think we don't quite know the limits of how intelligent they are or could be because it's just such a different type of intelligence from what we, you know, as humans and mammals, are used to. And so I think that's where the curmudgeonly-ness (ph) really started for me. It's just, you know, it's kind of just a funny premise, but like, gosh, that guy must be so grumpy if he's trapped in there. The parallel story Montgomery tells is of the dedicated staff that attends these creatures. Montgomery describes them with such vividness that you feel you know them enough to greet them on the street. In the outside world their interests and individuality make them anomalies; in the aquarium they are part of a tight empathetic family. The memories they share with these octopuses are stored like a string of precious pearls.
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An 60lb Giant Pacific Octopus lays 100,000 eggs which takes 6 months to hatch. During that time the mother keeps them safe in her den, wafting away predators, intruders, debris, barnacles and keep the water pure for her potential babies. She doesn't eat, her body digests itself, not fat as it doesn't have any, but muscles. And as soon as her eggs hatch, she dies. The story of Olive the Octopus in the book is also here in the Seattle Times together with a picture of her. Last year, one of my favorite tv programs was the documentary, My Octopus Teacher. The filmmaker spent a year diving the ocean and following an octopus around, eventually forming a bond with her as the octopus recognized and began interacting with him. It was touching and profoundly moving to watch their relationship grow. The filmmaker respected the octopus’s natural environment as she invited him into her world. I did gain a new appreciation for the octopus. I was amazed by the interactions between the various beings and humans. They are so much more than taught in school. They are complex living creatures with different personalities, moods and fears. Understanding their types of communications comes from a lot of time spent interacting with them. They have gifts that we do not, which makes it hard for us to relate to them. That does not mean that they are brainless, unfeeling beings without conscious thoughts. The octopus has amazing abilities, their brain can have as many as 75 lobes compared to the human 4. It can see in panoramic views. There is new evidence that they may be able to see with their skin to get the perfect camouflage. This is just a small bit of their abilities, they are truly amazing. I learned a lot (I’d always thought the plural of octopus was ‘octopi’ – how wrong I was…) and my existing interest in cephalopods (Octopuses, cuttlefish and the like) was fired way up. I was watching octopus videos online, thinking about visiting the local aquarium, and talking to my partner about making a snorkeling trip to a nearby pier known for its sealife - Montgomery had turned me into an octopus fanboy. Scientists have advanced quite a bit in their knowledge during the 21st century. One of the most mind-boggling revelation to me is just how much agency and independence reside with each of the octopus' tentacles. And as Montgomery immersed herself further into the world of these mysterious cephalopods, she wondered and concluded that indeed octopuses have souls.
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