The Soul of an Octopus: A Playful Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (UK Edition)
Sy Montgomery
Language: English
Pages: 205
ISBN: 2:00291629
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 2011 Sy Montgomery wrote a feature for Orion magazine entitled 'Deep Intellect' about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death. It went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then Sy has practised true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters.
Octopuses have varied personalities and intelligence they show in myriad ways: endless trickery to escape enclosures and get food; jetting water playfully to bounce objects like balls; and evading caretakers by using a scoop net as a trampoline and running around the floor on eight arms. But with a beak like a parrot, venom like a snake, and a tongue covered with teeth, how can such a being know anything? And what sort of thoughts could it think?
The intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees was only recently accepted by scientists, who now are establishing the intelligence of the octopus, watching them solve problems and deciphering the meaning of their colour-changing camouflage techniques. Montgomery chronicles this growing appreciation of the octopus, but also tells a love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about consciousness and the meeting of two very different minds.
stubbed my toe racing up to the tank, my chemistry changed, as the neurotransmitters associated with pain flooded into my system. Being able to recognize the neurotransmitters of pain would be a useful ability for an octopus; then it could tell whether prey was injured and therefore particularly easy to subdue. Earlier in the day, I had seen a fish’s dreams—and now, perhaps, an octopus had tasted my pain. In this watery realm, I was being drawn to possibilities I had never before imagined.
shudder. But the fish should have been happy, because that day—the day I earned my certification—I was the one who was hooked. When I return to the aquarium, I find the last fish have been evacuated from the GOT. Aquarium engineers pulled the plug on the 200,000-gallon tank at 10 a.m., October 2, draining it at the rate of one inch per minute. Finally, divers could use ladders to reach the lower water level and catch the speedy tarpon, permits, and jacks in nets. While I was diving in Dublin
seawater this detritus would be carried away—as would the thin ribbons of excrement at the bottom of the bag. “Nobody’s at their best after a cross-country flight,” I observe, “especially if you have to travel in a bag filled with your own excrement.” “I think I’ve been on that airline,” says Dave. “How’re you doing?” he asks the octopus. An arm waves wanly. We can’t see the animal’s eyes, but we can see the funnel and the opening in the mantle leading to one gill inhaling and exhaling
can provide a handy Quonset-hut-like shelter in an area with no suitable crevices in which to hide. Keith certainly did not expect to find an octopus on his first dive. But he did. With divemaster Franck Lerouvreur, Keith had departed in the boat via the channel just behind the dive center at CRIOBE, the French research station where we’re staying. Within 20 minutes, they arrived at a spot to drop anchor, where they could easily search along the barrier reef to the east of Opunohu. Even though
predator that it has been seen, deflect attention from the real eye, and make its owner appear larger—and might have other meanings as well. At another point, she poses for David’s underwater camera atop some coral rubble, inserting her arms into its holes, probing for prey. The whole time she stares ahead like a person fishing in his pocket for his keys. Time ceased to have meaning while we swam with the octopus in the warm shallows; we could have been together for five minutes or an hour.