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

by Sy Montgomery

She makes an eyebar, then mottles, then runs three arms across her brow. Gaping her gill opening wide as a pitcher, she inserts one arm into its entrance and then pokes the tip of her arm out her funnel, waving it like a person hailing a cab. She pulls that arm out, then sticks in another arm. Now she grows paler, expanding hugely with each breath and exhaling forcefully through her funnel. Her pupil is a fat bar, giving her an intense expression. Then she rotates her funnel, more flexible than a tongue, out of my sight. She continues to modify her coloring: Her eyebar gone, now she creates a starburst pattern. Her mottling is as rich and varied as a plush Persian carpet as she fluffs the eggs toward the back of her lair with one arm. She turns and I see that the eggs extend two feet back—there are not just thousands, but tens of thousands of them. I point them out to two children and their mom, and they gasp.