Party like octopuses on fucking ecstasy

The mind of a creature this alien

I don't know how to review nonfiction. For that matter, I'm not sure I know how to read it very well. Plain old fact just doesn't interest me much.

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness, by Sy Montgomery, is short on plain old fact, but deep in personal anecdote and light philosophical speculation.

Reading it doesn't feel like reading nonfiction at all, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Did I learn anything? Not much. I find octopuses fascinating; I've probably picked up a thing or two about them over the years, but I'm not an expert. This is not book to learn facts about octopuses. For that, see Wikipedia.

This book is for those people, like myself, who think octopuses are amazing but completely alien creatures.

Nagel concluded, like Wittgenstein before him, that it is impossible to know what it is like to be a bat. After all, a bat sees much of its world using echolocation, a sense we do not possess and can hardly imagine. How much further from our reach is the mind of an octopus?

Yet still I wondered: What is it like to be an octopus?

Isn't this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you?

Does this book answer those questions? No. But I think it knows at the outset that these are unanswerable things. It's not about consciousness per se. It's more about, as the subtitle suggests, glorying in the wonder of it all.

Octopuses are weird.

They taste with their skin. Can they taste our sadness, our pain?

Most of their neurons aren't in their brains, but in their arms. Is that what it takes for effective multitasking? Arms that can think independently?

Technically colorblind, how do they achieve camouflage? It's been suggested they see with their skin.

Assessing the mind of a creature this alien demands that we be extraordinary flexible in our own thinking. Marine biologist James Wood suggests our hubris gets in our way.

The book tours Jules Verne, Descartes, Antonio Damasio, Jane Goodall, Jacques Cousteau. Theory of mind and scuba diving lessons. It touches on the behaviour of animals of all kinds.

I may not have learned anything material, but I spent a few days in the excellent company of this naturalist and her engrossing stories of her several vertebrate and invertebrate friends.

Article
"Deep Intellect," Orion Magazine.

Video
Sy Montgomery: The Soul of an Octopus (59:25)
Do animals think and feel? (16:40)

Three hearts!

Happy World Octopus Day!

The Octopus

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus
If I were thou, I'd call me Us.

— Ogden Nash

[via]

See also:

• Cordelia, the National Aquarium's giant Pacific octopus
• 8 other famous octopuses
• The linguistic issue of the plural of octopus

[via]

The magnificent octopus

Although this blog was not named for the cephalopod, I have a certain fascination with these creatures. I would be remiss not to share this review of Octopus!. (And how is that not a fantastic name for a book?!)

One argument is that extreme self-reliance requires extreme engagement with the environment. We associate intelligence with dependence in childhood, longevity, and civilization; but in the case of the octopus, it seems that the opposite conditions promote curiosity, problem-solving, speedy learning, and sensitivity.

An octopus that doesn't even exist

"Or take our situation, for instance, why do you say it isn't a manifestation of a supercivilization?"

"Hmm, too human. They've discovered that earthlings are on the threshold of the universe. Afraid of the competition, they decide to stop it. Is that it?"

"Why not?"

"Because that's fiction. Dime-store fiction in bright, cheap covers. It's like trying to fit an octopus into a pair of tuxedo pants. And not a plain octopus at that, but an octopus that doesn't even exist."

— from Definitely Maybe, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Despite the awesomeness of the interwebs, there is an appalling dearth of images of octopuses in tuxedo pants, let alone any that approach what this passage conjures in my head. The occasional jacket-wearing octopus, yes. Also, people wearing tuxedoes while eating octopus. But no pants-wearing octopus.

There you have it. Proof that such an octopus doesn't even exist.

Note: It should not be construed that this novel is in any way about octopus — tuxedo pants-wearing octopus, space alien octopus, or octopus of any kind. There is some caviar, though. And to this point, there is some conjecture as to the existence of (non-octopus-like) space aliens. The quoted passage is a simple — and delightful — metaphor.

And then there was one

One of the perks of my no-longer-new job is that when the kid comes with me (hey, I guess that's a perk right there), there are some fixtures in this office space that serve as marvelous distractions.

There's the freshwater aquarium. There's the saltwater aquarium. (Although, I don't know which is which. They both have, in addition to fish, similar (but different!) anemone-like creatures and cucumber-like creatures, star-like creatures and shrimp-type creatures.) And there's the aquarium with the leopard eel.

There's the goldfish and turtle pond with the cascading water at the entranceway.

And there's the CEO, who loves to watch the fish, tend to the fish, talk about the fish. He also gets on well with kids. Thanks to him, Helena already knows more about these fish than I ever will. Also, he's good at task-setting — like, "You need to catch 10 goldfish with this small net by x o'clock. I'll get you a bucket to put them in" — thanks to the accomplishment of which challenge Helena was able to witness the feeding of said goldfish to the leopard eel and a few other choice carnivorous creatures.

The first time she came with me to this office (during her Christmas break), there were 8 mini turtles and 1 much larger one, commonly referred to (by the kids who frequent the office) as the mommy turtle, although apparently none of them were actually related.

While I worked(!), Helena set about documenting their characteristics.

It was just a few short weeks later that I heard about the first demise. "Oh, no, which one was it?," I ask a coworker. "I don't know. Do they have names? The one with spots all over." Gasp. Spotty!

The last mini turtle vanished last week. That leaves just mommy turtle, and she doesn't look too happy these days.

I found the cataloguing project Helena had started on (in scintillatingly legible gold-coloured pencil), and I transcribe its text below, to commemorate, in this small way, the contribution these turtles have made to my work life.

**********
Document sur les tortus du travaille

tortu préféré brownie
1. Brownie aime être calme et atantife.
**********
[sic]

Darwin would be proud.

An absurdly massive tentacled sepia event

The book I am most anticipating this summer (cuz I'm that kind of girl) is Kraken, by China Miéville. Cuz, c'mon... KRAKEN!!! and by China Fucking Miéville! How monsterliciously cool is that?!

This was what they came for, that pinkly enormous thing. For all its immobility; the wounds of its slow-motion decay, the scabbing that clouded its solution; despite its eyes being shrivelled and lost; its sick colour; despite the twist in its skein of limbs, as if it were being wrung out. For all that, it was what they were there for.

It would hang, an absurdly massive tentacled sepia event. Architeuthis dux. The giant squid.

This is what I came for!

With any luck, I'll have a copy in time for my romantic-getaway fishing weekend, cuz really, how romantic is fishing? (I can't believe I'm doing this for you, J-F! but I tease! no, really, I can't wait!) And given the choice between a) sitting in a boat all day fishing and not catching any fish and b) sitting in a boat all day reading and not catching any fish — well, I think you know where my heart lies (yes, with you, my love, trapped in a boat). And if I could be trappedlazing in a boat all day (with you!) reading Kraken and being scared out of my pants that some, gasp, creature! may rise out of the deep and rock our idyll... well, that would be awesome.

Excerpt.

Review: "epic exercise in cephalopunk eschatology and fundamentalist gang warfare."

Octopus

"They do things which, normally, you'd only expect vertebrates to do."

Like tool use.

Check out the amazing video: "Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters."