Eight times the fun

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, zoology, psychology, animals, naturalists, memoirs

Preparing to write this book, Sy Montgomery fell in love with an octopus; actually, four of them, in sequence. She is a naturalist and a popular writer. This publicity photo shows her "holding hands" with one of them; this is at the New England Aquarium in Boston, where they have housed a series of them quite far from their West Coast origins.

Dr. Montgomery's book Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness brings us inside an aquarium that offered her exceptional access to several giant Pacific octopuses over a span of several years, and tells us of her interactions with octopus specialists on both coasts of North America.

Although octopuses are not social—for most species, they meet only to mate, and that only once near the end of their lives—many are quite willing to interact with humans. In an aquarium setting, if an octopus likes you, he or she will enjoy physical contact. When one is red, as in the picture, it signals excitement (not anger). A calm and contented octopus will be white or nearly white, and in some moods it will change colors almost like a kaleidoscope. In the ocean they can behave in similar ways, although "holding hands" with a wild octopus is rare. (I "met" a middle-sized octopus in a tide pool near Newport Beach, California many years ago. When I poked at it with a stick, it unrolled an arm along the stick and took hold of my wrist! I pulled away quickly. I should have held still; it wanted to taste me to see what I was.)

Octopuses are curious, inquisitive, mischievous, and playful. They are the most intelligent invertebrates, particularly the large ones such as the Pacific giant, which has a brain (plus 8 sub-brains in the arms) totaling 300 million neurons, about 3/4 as many as a dog. Based on the author's experiences, they put them to good use.

For such a smart animal, an octopus has a very short life, usually less than four years. They grow very fast, from an egg the size of a rice grain to full size in half a year to a year. For the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris ("vulgaris" means "common" in Latin), with its 3-foot arms as an adult, and adult weight of 9-10 pounds, that's impressive enough; for the giant Pacific octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, which has arms in the 6- to 8-foot range and an adult weight of 40-100 pounds (or more), it is amazing.

The stories in the book highlight the consciousness of the animals. They recognize people, and each other. We learn that even much simpler animals, including insects, suffer as much as we do from sleep deprivation: a fruit fly disturbed persistently gets into such a state that it cannot fly straight, and behaves like a drunk. Badly sleep deprived humans also appear drunk. Many animals are now known to think things through when confronted with a puzzling situation. They are not just bundles of "instincts", whatever those are.

The author complains that it is still difficult to study consciousness in animals because of a strong prejudice against "anthropomorphism", leveled as a criticism of people who conduct the "wrong" kind of research. How rare is humility among scientists! Can they not realize that the reason we have emotions is because species ancestral to us had emotions, and ours are not necessarily much more developed than the emotions of an ape, a horse, a mink or a mouse (or even a bird, reptile, frog or fish, not to speak of invertebrates); the reason we can reason is because ancestral species reasoned; the reason we cheat and lie is because we come from a long line (hundreds of millions of years long!) of cheaters and liars. They are not "similar to us", we are similar to them! This book shows just how similar, in many ways, our thoughts and reactions are to those of that brightest of all mollusks, an octopus.

I can't find a way to write more; just read the book! The author packs more information and lyrical writing into this 250-page book than most writers can manage in twice the space.