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

by Sy Montgomery

In his classic The Outermost House, American naturalist Henry Beston writes that animals “are not brethren, they are not underlings” but beings “gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.”

“Just about every animal,” Scott says—not just mammals and birds—“can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.”

Eggs were surely life’s first love, and protecting one’s eggs was surely love’s first urge. Love is that ancient, that pure, that lasting. It has persisted through billions of species, through millions of years. No wonder the sages say that love never dies.

“Volition is karma,” the Buddha is reported to have said. Karma, in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, is conscious action. Karma is not fate, but, in fact, its opposite: Karma is choice.

How tired she must be, I thought, after her rich, full life—a life lived between worlds. She had known the sea’s wild embrace; she had mastered the art of camouflage; she had learned the taste of our skin and the shapes of our faces; she had instinctively remembered how her ancestors wove eggs into chains. She had served as an ambassador for her kind to tens of thousands of aquarium visitors, even transforming disgust to admiration. What an odyssey she had lived.