Getting intimate with a curious octopus: wildlife writer Sy Montgomery profiled

“I wanted to touch an alternate reality. I wanted to explore a different kind consciousness, if such a thing exists. What is it like to be an octopus? Is it anything like being a human? Is it even possible to know?” Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, 2. 

Sy Montgomery is an exceptional writer about wildlife, with amazing diversity. She has written about pink dolphins, octopuses, sharks, gorillas, elephants, tigers, snow leopards, cheetahs, eagles, hawks, tree kangaroos, turtles, pigs, hummingbirds and much more. I interviewed her for my podcast on curiosity.

Here are some excerpts from my podcast about her experiences with octopuses: 

“It was clear she wanted to know what I was and I wanted to know what she was. So, I plunged my hands and arms into the water and immediately she started covering me with her soft questing suckers. And the thing about octopus skin is they can taste with every inch of their skin, but this is most exquisitely developed in the suckers of which, on the giant Pacific, there are 200 on each arm, and each sucker is capable of a pincer grip so they can conform the sucker to almost any surface. And it is now known that they actually can taste the biome of various creatures. They can probably taste beneath our skin and taste our blood, too.” 

"So, here's this creature who is very distantly related to humans. The last time we shared a common ancestor, everyone was a tube half a billion years ago, who is looking into my face, who has chosen to leave its lair, who again has chosen to take its arms and suckers and lift them out of the water at considerable effort to see what the heck I was. I was certainly not the first human that she met, but it is now known that octopuses can recognize individual humans. This has been tested. So, I was a new human to her. And we spent quite some time kind of exploring each other. So, immediately it was clear to me that she was just as curious about me as I was about her."

………….. 

"Curiosity does expose you to risk often, but the risks are often worth it because you're finding out more about the world around you. … Giant Pacific octopuses only live three to five years. So, their curiosity from the point that they hatch is quite intense. They have to learn everything that they need to survive. They are not being taught it by their parents. They hatch out of tiny eggs the size of a grain of rice. The father's long gone. He has nothing to do with caring for the eggs. The mother may care for the eggs until they hatch, but then shortly after that, she dies. So curiosity is a really important tool for an octopus. And I think their curiosity is even more intense in their short lives than ours is."

………….. 

“The first octopus I met, Athena. And I knew she was old, but I didn't think that I would only get to see her like two or three times before she died. And I was so upset when she died. And usually, you know, with a person that you've only met two or three times, you're not as upset with their death. But when you are singled out, by someone like an octopus, it makes you feel so special. And she was my first. I'd never known anyone so unlike me. … Athena was suddenly my friend and I was very upset when she died. And the same, my gosh, worse, worse, worse with Octavia, because I'd known her ever since she pretty much arrived at New England Aquarium till almost the very day she died. And I loved her. I don't know how she felt about me. I don't know if we could call it love. I don't even know if we could call it affection, if it felt like to her, if affection felt the same to her as it did to me. But I do know that she chose my company. And at the end of her life, she not only remembered me, but she made a huge effort when she was sick and old and dying. She made a huge effort to come from the bottom of her tank up to the surface to greet me, to look into my face, and to touch and to taste me for one last time.” 

………….. “

"This really deeply affected me, my relationships with these animals. It changed my understanding of what a mind is. It changed and widened my appreciation for consciousness. And Thales of Miletus, the presocratic Greek philosopher, I'm sure you're familiar with him, he said this great thing. And it kind of sums up how these animals and knowing them changed the way I understood the world. And he is believed to have said, the universe is alive and has fire in it and is full of gods. And to me, what that says is that our universe is far more animate, far more sentient, far more emotional than we might think at first. Our universe, our world is incandescent with lives who love their lives as much as we love our own. And full of gods, it tells me that we look around us and everything we see is holy. And we need to treat our world in that way.”

This is an excerpt from a podcast with Sy Montgomery. The full interview can be found in my podcast on YouTube.

Photo credit for photo of Montgomery with an octopus: Amy Kunze

Photo credit for photo of Montgomery underwater: David Scheel

Podcast with Sy Montgomery on The Old Curiosity Podcast

The Old Curiosity Podcast