How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

by Sy Montgomery

Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.

I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you: with four legs or two or eight or even none; some with internal skeletons, some without. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.

Octavia and I were separated by half a billion years of evolution. We were as different as land from sea. Was it even possible for a human to understand the emotions of a creature as different from us as an octopus?