Consider the Cephalopod

There’s value in information that broadens awareness about a subject or being, and I don’t mean John Mulaney or Instagram. In this instance: We should quit fucking with octopuses, and certainly stop killing and eating them. 

Octopuses are among the planet’s distinct creatures. Intelligent, curious, pliant, adaptable, tender, freakishly strong, a wonder. All of that is made clear in “The Soul of an Octopus,” by naturalist Sy Montgomery. I’m late to it, as it came out in 2015 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It’s a cool, light read. 

Octopuses have a bad rap, portrayed as monsters in literature, movies and sea-faring lore. Think Jules Verne, the Kraken, and wildly exaggerated tales of whale-sized octopuses attacking and destroying ships. It’s understandable, given that they’re about as physically dis-similar to human beings as imaginable, maybe as close to an alien being on Earth as you’ll find. 

Some folks freak when touched by an octopus, because it’s such a peculiar sensation. They’re invertebrates. They’re slimy. They have three hearts. Their mouths are located between their legs and are like a parrot’s beak. They taste and grasp and identify with the suckers on their tentacles, which often move independent of each other. Their brains are essentially wrapped around their throats. Their blood is blue. They are capable of releasing a neurotoxin. They squirt ink to deal with both predators and prey. They can change colors and shapes and skin texture in split seconds. They can squeeze into impossibly small spaces (a 50-pound octopus whose tentacles stretch five feet can fit through a space the size of an orange). They possess a funnel that they use to propel themselves and to shoot water at people and other creatures. 

Yet researchers who work with them find that they have personalities. They can be aggressive or chill, shy or playful, disinterested or engaging. They change color not just to camouflage themselves, but when they’re content or anxious or fearful. They recognize and remember people. 

There’s a story about one octopus at an aquarium that routinely squirted one of its handlers. The woman left for another job, and when she returned to visit months later, the octopus squirted her again. It had squirted no one else since she left. 

In one experiment, two unfamiliar handlers dressed identically. One brought food, the other gently poked the octopus with a bristly stick. Within a week, the octopus recognized the two on sight and went toward the feeder and away from the irritator, even when neither was carrying food or a stick. 

Though octopuses’ eyes work like a human’s, they are pretty much color-blind, which makes their ability to change color and camouflage themselves all the more remarkable. How do they know what colors to turn? 

Researchers think that their arms help them “see” because they are so sensitive and receptive. An octopus has about 300 million neurons, three-fifths of which are in their arms rather than their brains (a rat has 200 million neurons, humans about 100 billion neurons in their brains). Where humans have four distinct lobes in their brains, octopuses have 50 to 75, depending on size and species, which permits enormous multi-tasking. 

One neuroscientist quoted in the book said: “Short of Martians showing up and offering themselves to science, cephalopods are the only example outside of vertebrates of how to build a clever, complex brain.” 

Octopuses (the plural is not octopi – ‘i’ is a Latin plural ending, while ‘octopus’ is derived from a Greek word, and you aren’t supposed to mix the two) can untie knots and undo latches and open jars. At one aquarium, an octopus played with a small plastic ball that could be screwed and unscrewed in half. One handler put food inside the ball. The octopus not only unscrewed the ball to get the food, but screwed it back together when finished. They use their suckers to taste and probe and gather information, and they can pinch them together as humans do their thumb and forefinger. A two-inch sucker on a large octopus is capable of lifting 20-to-30 pounds. As octopuses have hundreds of suckers – smaller at the tips of their tentacles, larger toward their bodies – they possess tremendous strength. Divers and handlers know to be extremely cautious with them, as larger octopuses can overpower a person, though it’s more out of curiosity than malice. 

In 2012, a group of neuroscientists at the Cambridge (UK) Declaration on Consciousness issued a proclamation that included: “The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.” As we gradually bake and submerge the planet, it strikes me that the whole dominion-over-all-creatures thing will become moot. All hands, and arms, on deck. And another intelligent species has far greater value than whether it’s better grilled or sauteed.