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

Love this book. It would be a good choice for high schoolers. Interesting, well written, knowledgeable, fun and sweet. I highly recommend this book for any teenager and adult.

The information contained in this book was almost all new to me, because I read it before seeing the later film about octopuses (I forget the film's name), though I had read about/seen some of the amazing things about them, such as their ability to figure out how to get a snack inside a jar by unscrewing the lid-- a multi-stepped and impressive bit of intellectual work. It's possible that if you're already familiar with more of the information in this book, you might be less in love with it than I was...but that said, friends to whom I've given or recommended the book fell in love with it as much as I did, for the writing as well as the subect matter, so I recommend you give it a try, if you;ve enjoyed the books of writers like Cy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. You might even want to keep it, as I have, for repeated readings, and repeated shots of wonder and awe.

Sy Montgomery beautifully writes about her various interactions with various octopuses. I got to enjoy the audio version of this book, and she read it so beautifully. She explores whether animals, specifically octopus, have a consciousness and a soul. The author poetically provides incredible and vast information on octopuses and other sea creatures. The book reads more like a memoir than that of an informative/educational novel. I appreciate the facts and quotes the author provides. I did indeed learn things about all kinds of sea creatures and life for animals in an aquarium. However, I can foresee a more educated person than I, especially one with a philosophical background, to find this a bore. I also am not a fan of catching animals in the wild to be put on display in zoos and aquariums. I'd rather support rehabilitation. This book could be seen as a bit inhumane with the nonchalant idea/support of catching animals for zoos/aquariums. Although, I feel the people in this book made the most of the situation and befriended and deeply cared for each animal. The author learning to scuba dive was surprisingly honest. I had no idea how hard and dangerous scuba diving can be. This book deepened and strengthened my knowledge and love of octopuses. I thoroughly enjoyed the memoir-like read that wove in information. She wrote in such a way that made me fall in love with each octopus and evoke a deep pain when they would pass. It really is an interesting read. The end of the book provides numerous pictures of the various octopuses we are introduced to in the book. I appreciate having a picture of the octopuses I never got to see but loved nonetheless.

If you are fascinated or even just a little bit interested in octopus, I highly recommend this book. It is a quick and relatively easy read, sure to make you smile as you will learn so much about and appreciate the species.

MONTGOMERY, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus. Atria. 2015. 261p, illus., bibliog., index. WILLIAMS, Wendy. Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid. Abrams Image. 2011. 224p, illus., bibliog., index. These two books are about cephalopods –octopuses (not “octopi,” the word comes from Greek, not Latin) and squid. Both books are well written and copiously illustrated (photographs and drawings) but what makes them such fascinating reading is the creatures they are about. Octopuses and squid offer us our only examples of what intelligence and feeling could be like outside of the vertebrate family. University of Chicago neuroscientist Cliff Ragsdale comments: “Short of Martians showing up and offering themselves up to science, cephalopods are the only example outside of vertebrates of how to build a complex, clever brain.” Alexa, who works with octopuses as a volunteer, says: “There’s nothing as peculiar as an octopus.” (Both quoted in Montgomery) There is ample evidence of octopus intelligence. There is general agreement that they are among the smartest animals on earth. But it’s not our kind of intelligence, not even close although there enough points of similarity to convince observers they are reasoning and feeling. To start with, their brains are organized differently, distributed in parts spread across a central brain and eight tentacles rather than consolidated in one central spot like ours is. Furthermore, whatever they think and feel, their actions are so different from ours that in many cases, we don’t have a clue why they react like they do. Octopuses in captivity, even in the wild, respond differently to different people. With some they’re comfortable, even friendly, with others hostile or defensive. We know from this and from their puzzle-solving ability --they are master locksmiths, for instance, who can get though up to three sealed containers to reach the food within-- that they make inferences and remember what they’ve learned. They get bored, need to keep active. Bored octopuses held captive in tanks get in trouble, much like bored Border collies moping around a house get in trouble, but where the collie will likely chew up rugs and furniture, the octopus will try to escape, maybe migrate to a neighboring tank to eat the creatures inside it. Octopuses in captivity beg for food, appearing in the same part of the tank and adopting the same posture whenever food-bearers arrive. We can read their emotions in broad strokes: red, angry or excited: white, calm or indifferent. The books are written by seasoned science reporters. This is Montgomery’s ninth natural science book for adult readers and her twenty-first in all. For Williams, it’s her seventh. Both writers have won awards for science reporting. Montgomery’s is the warmer book, as she details her personal interactions with four octopuses in succession: gentle, friendly Athena; playful, inquiring Octavia; the more fiery Kali; and Karma. These are fascinating and informative books about a creature that’s like us in some respects but alien in most, an animal that sees and weighs us just as do it. Montgomery’s especially is about what it means to respect and love a creature without expecting it to become like us.

A worthy companion piece (even if the author didn't intend it as such) to Peter Godfrey-Smith's "Other Minds:________" While I already knew from other accounts (Godfrey-Smith, Jacques Cousteau, etc.) that octopuses were not only intelligent but ofttimes friendly and playful creatures, this book takes that notion even further; not only are octopuses sentient beings, they apparently even have distinct individual personalities (and, arguably, apparently even emotions) that become evident in their different interactions with individual human beings. A most fascinating, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, always engrossing and enjoyable read. RANDOM STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS (and noteworthy passages): --"I knew little about octopuses—not even that the scientifically correct plural is not octopi, as I had always believed (it turns out you can’t put a Latin ending—i—on a word derived from Greek, such as octopus)." Hey wow, just like my buddy Jeremy Nelson said! It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange." Like that one octopus escape video I posted on Facebook a coupla months back that got so much attention . --"they are classed within the invertebrates as mollusks, as are slugs and snails and clams, animals that are not particularly renowned for their intellect. Clams don’t even have brains." Ironic taxonomic company that the octopus keeps. --Victor Hugo was such a woefully ignorant phuquetard when it came to the octopus. --"Her black pupil is a fat hyphen in a pearly globe. Its expression reminds me of the look in the eyes of paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses: serene, all-knowing, heavy with wisdom stretching back beyond time." Same can be said about cuttlefish. Squids' eyes, by contrast, aren't so dreamy-looking. --"As I stroke her with my fingertips, her skin goes white beneath my touch. White is the color of a relaxed octopus; in cuttlefish, close relatives of octopus, females turn white when they encounter a fellow female, someone whom they need not fight or flee." In the immortal words of Johnny Carson, "I *did* not *know* that!" I’ve always harbored a fondness for monsters. Even as a child, I had rooted for Godzilla and King Kong instead of for the people trying to kill them. It had seemed to me that these monsters’ irritation was perfectly reasonable. Nobody likes to be awakened from slumber by a nuclear explosion, so it was no wonder to me Godzilla was crabby; as for King Kong, few men would blame him for his attraction to pretty Fay Wray. (Though her screaming would have eventually put off anyone less patient than a gorilla.)" Haha, valid point. --"'There’s always an effort to minimize emotion and intelligence in other species,' the New England Aquarium’s director of public relations, Tony LaCasse, said after I met Athena. 'The prejudice is particularly strong against fish and invertebrates,' agreed Scott." Against birds too, I would hasten to add. --"Each arm seemed like a separate creature, with a mind of its own. In fact, this is almost literally true. Three fifths of octopuses’ neurons are not in the brain but in the arms." Just like discussed in the book "Other Minds." --"And yet, this body, so unlike my own, was responding to my touch like a dog’s or a cat’s or a child’s. Even though her skin can change color and taste flavors, it, like mine, relaxes into a caress. And though her mouth is between her arms, and her saliva dissolves flesh, she, like me, clearly enjoys a good meal when she’s hungry." Aaww shucks. --"If animals were conscious, according to one book, written by a Tufts University professor, dogs would untangle their leashes from poles and dolphins would leap out of tuna nets. (That author clearly doesn’t read Dear Abby. Why don’t those women leave their abusive husbands? Why won’t that couple just stop visiting the rude in-laws?)" Bingo. --"'An aquarium without an octopus,' as the Victorian naturalist Henry Lee of Brighton, UK, wrote in 1875, 'is like a plum pudding without plums.'" Too bad Henry Lee couldn't slap some sense into Victor Hugo! --"The eel was dreaming." Wow! --"The students were supposed to refer to their animals by numbers in their research papers, but they ended up calling them by name: Jet Stream, Martha, Gertrude, Henry, Bob. Some were so friendly, Alexa said, 'they would lift their arms out of the water like a dog jumps up to greet you'—or like a child who wants to be lifted up and hugged." Jet Stream the Octopus = Jet the Dog?!?! --"The bliss of stroking an octopus’s head is difficult to convey to most people, even to animal lovers." Must add this to my bucket list....

The title of this book is a misnomer, and therein lies the bait-and-switch. (Disclosure, some spoilers ahead) This is more a memoir and meditation of a naturalist longing to feel a connection with a creature that shows more nuance and intelligence than most; in short her own spiritual journey. She warns against anthropomorphizing animals's behaviors but then proceeds to do exactly this over the course of the book. The book itself is well-written, but hard to slog through at times, given the breezy, often tangential prose. She conveys enough interesting interspersed facts about these creatures as to have given me further desire to look more into the subject matter, and for that I am grateful. I believe the author to have a good heart and is well-meaning but unfortunately comes across as superficially naive with an undercurrent of narcissism that cannot be ignored; you get the sense of "Look at me!" much too often especially when she details her learning scuba diving techniques and the challenges thereof. I have read some of the author's other books that did not me this impression. There are too many digressions into the lives of her friends and her own personal experience. I'm an MD psychiatrist, and as such my bias/responisibility will always be shifted towards confidentiality and discretion as it pertains to my patients and friends/family. This maybe why I find the sharing of intensely personal details regarding these peoples's lives so jarring especially given that these do little to advance the purported story of the octopus; with intent as far as I can see that which is given that these people of diverse backgrounds can come together and admire and feel a connection with this creature, ergo said creature has a soul, ergo we are all good people. The logical fallacy I will not go into here. I find what is most interesting about this book is the fact that it provokes such a strong moral question that is cavalierly overlooked and not discussed by this author. If we are operating under the principle that the octopus has higherintelligence and a soul, are we not doing the ultimate disservice to the creature, by keeping them in an artificial prison of our design to be looked at and played with at our leisure? There was an instance where the author discusses the trapping process of the octopus that made me inwardly cringe with emphasis on the danger of the transportation process. Other instances of discomfort are that one of the octopuses in the narrative is in as far as I understood to be in a large barrel that she increasingly did not fit in, but needed to be kept there because the other octopus in the larger tank was still living. This octopus once moved to a larger tank immediately proceeds to escape. The staff, the author, and the other octopus support staff are all distraught, and one character states something along the lines of "at least she had one day of freedom". To which I say, how about a life? One final instance where I was very uncomfortable was the concept of the Valentine's Day date/mate incident at the Seattle aquarium. A male and female are held in a tank separated by a common barrier that is released on V-day, and the public is treated to a show. To me this seems to cheapen the dignity of what should be the most private of undertakings into mass entertainment. I have not thought so deeply about a zoo/aquarium previously, but I felt an increasing feeling of unease regarding our common practices of taming nature while simultaneously shouting to the world how much we respect it. The hypocrisy jumps out at me the more I meditate on the subject matter.

Octopuses are fascinating creatures, and more intelligent than we give them credit for. This is a fascinating glimpse into their lives and perhaps even thoughts. Well written and enchanting.

Fascinante!!

What a charming tale by a sympathetic biologist about wonderful animals with a soul: three hearts, nine brains, and a vocabulary of mood expression through a spectrum of changing colours. You will oookk differently at animals after this: and want to see an octopus at close range, with hands on (Their suckers leave love hickies when pleased by your taste and mood.

Great read, fantastic animals. Amazon servive all good

Fantastic insights and a lovely personal story.

I love the soal of an octopus. I is so interesting and I learned so much about creatures in the sea. I read the book twice and have passed it on to my kids to read. I think it is must read.