Catch Not the Cuttlefish

We’ve seen (in The Big Book of Monsters) that almost everything Jules Verne or Victor Hugo said about the devilfish is pure hokum. But writers have been making extremely suspect statements about cephalopods—octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish—long before Verne or Hugo.

Aelian, in his book, On the Characteristics of Animals (ca. 210 AD), says that if you plant an orchard by the seaside, you’ll find that octopuses “have emerged from the waves, have crept up the trunks, have enveloped the branches,...