More than anything I wanted to know why the octopus, with her big and alien brain, did not eat while she brooded her eggs. Surely she must have hungered. Did she have any inkling of the flurry of babies that might not make it if she strayed from her vigil to hunt or eat or stretch her limbs? I knew I was anthropomorphizing, and yet I couldn’t imagine how a creature with a consciousness would starve for four and a half years without something like hope.
