Sphere

by Michael Crichton

“Interesting. It gives you quite a strange feeling to realize the gentle intelligence of these creatures, particularly octopi. You know an octopus is smarter than a dog, and would probably make a much better pet. It’s a wonderful, clever, very emotional creature, an octopus. Only we never think of them that way.”

And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don’t have to think of the real threat—the terrifying threat—they may represent, without ever intending to.”

“In fact, an octopus is so smart that the biggest limitation to its behavior is its lifespan. An octopus lives only three years, and that’s not long enough to develop anything as complicated as a culture or civilization. Maybe if octopi lived as long as we do, they would long ago have taken over the world.

Yet the truth was that responsibility began with each individual person, and the choices he made. Each person had a choice.