Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

A marine research unit at Monterey Bay, California (MBARI), explores deep-sea environments with remote-controlled submarines that carry video cameras. In 2007 they were inspecting a rocky outcrop nearly a mile underwater, off the coast of central California. They saw a deep-sea octopus (Graneledone boreopacifica) moving around. Returning a month or so later, they found the same octopus guarding a clutch of eggs. They kept returning to the site to watch the progress of this clutch of eggs, and always found the octopus there. In the end they watched this one octopus for four and a half years. This octopus brooded her eggs for longer than any other known octopus is thought to live in total, and the fifty-three months it spent there is the longest egg-brooding period reported for any animal species. (For example, no fish is known to guard its eggs for more than four or five months.)