The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

by Sy Montgomery

The sharks don’t eat all the fish in the tank, because they’re well fed. “But sometimes they will eat or injure other animals for other reasons besides hunger,” Scott told me. One day, a group of permits—long, thin, shiny fish whose dorsal fins are shaped like scythes—were thrashing around near the surface of the Giant Ocean Tank. “They were making a lot of noise and commotion,” Tony said. One of the sand tiger sharks shot to the surface to attack the fish, biting their fins—but not killing or eating them. Apparently, the shark was just irritated. “This was a dominance bite, not a predator bite,” Tony said.

We talk about this all the time at our aquarium

In 2007, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo put together an enrichment handbook for octopus, filled with ideas of how to keep these smart creatures entertained.

Cool, go home zoo!

“Everyone is different,” Wilson reminded us. “They have different personalities. Even lobsters have different personalities. You stick around here long enough and you’ll see.”

The cephalopods have a command of thirty to fifty different patterns per individual animal. They can change color, pattern, and texture in seven tenths of a second.

“Just about every animal,” Scott says—not just mammals and birds—“can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.” Once you find the right way to work with an animal, be it an octopus or an anaconda, together, you can accomplish what even Saint Francis might have considered a miracle.

exotic yarn business, Purple Okapi,

not running anymore, sad

Perhaps, I muse, this is the pace at which the Creator thinks, in this weighty, graceful, liquid manner—like blood flows, not like synapses fire. Above the surface, we move and think like wiggly children, or like teens who twitch away at their computer-phones, multitasking but never focusing. But the ocean forces you to move more slowly, more purposefully, and yet more pliantly. By entering it, you are bathed in a grace and power you don’t experience in air. To dive beneath the surface feels like entering the Earth’s vast, dreaming subconscious. Submitting to its depth, its currents, its pressure, is both humbling and freeing.

Even without touching her neighbors, Kali can taste them. Her chemoreceptors can pick up chemical information from a distance of at least 30 yards. One researcher found that octopus suckers were 100 times more sensitive tasting chemicals dissolved in seawater than a human tongue tasting flavors dissolved in distilled water.

How does he feel about capturing animals in the wild and sending them to a life in captivity? He has no regrets. “They’re ambassadors from the wild,” he said. “Unless people know about and see these animals, there will be no stewardship for octopuses in the wild. So knowing they are going to accredited institutions, where they are going to be loved, where people will see the animal in its glory—that’s good, and it makes me happy. She’ll live a long, good life—longer than in the wild.”

Out of sight, out of mind unfortunately