{"id":3757,"date":"2014-11-18T08:06:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T13:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3757"},"modified":"2020-12-28T18:55:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T23:55:04","slug":"why-i-dont-eat-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3757","title":{"rendered":"Why I Don\u2019t Eat Octopus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3399\" style=\"width: 319px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3399\" class=\" wp-image-3399\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Octopus_at_Kelly_Tarlton_s_converted.jpg?resize=309%2C209\" alt=\"octopus\" width=\"309\" height=\"209\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3399\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: wikimedia\/commons)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Several compelling articles about the octopus have emerged lately from the laboratories of marine biology (like this one in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2013\/10\/how-the-freaky-octopus-can-help-us-understand-the-human-brain\/\"><em>Wired<\/em> 10\/2013<\/a>, by author <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Octopus-The-Most-Mysterious-Creature\/dp\/1591845270\/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z\">Katherine Harmon Courage<\/a> who\u2019s written a whole book on the topic). They\u2019ve dangled fascinating information in front of my nose. Like: researchers cannot set anything down\u2014coffee cup, clipboard, whatever\u2014near their octopus tanks unless they want to find them <em>in<\/em> the tank. Like: the octopus does not have a central brain, as vertebrates do; its intelligence\u2014supposedly on a par with that of dogs\u2014is distributed throughout its body and works quite differently than ours. Like: the eight arms of an octopus can mimic the texture and color of whatever surface the animal is resting on, and they can do so separately\u2014two gravelly-looking arms and six sandy-looking ones, for example. Amazing.<\/p>\n<p>Last week I snatched up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Octopus-Reaktion-Books-Richard-Schweid\/dp\/1780231776\"><em>Octopus<\/em><\/a>, by Richard Schweid, one of a series of natural history books published by Reaktion Books, Ltd., now atop my 2015 to-read pile. The book is rich with photos and illustrations from world art, and its first line is a grabber: \u201cWhen you watch an octopus, an octopus watches you back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A question to Mr. Know-It-All in this month\u2019s <em>Wired<\/em> is, \u201cI\u2019m an omnivore, but are there animals that are just too intelligent to eat?\u201d Christopher Niemann\u2019s response concludes \u201call animals are likely too intelligent to eat.\u201d But he concedes readers will probably continue to eat them anyway. He says, \u201cI do\u2014proof that intelligence may be massively overrated.\u201d Or empathy. But I don\u2019t eat octopus not because they are too intelligent, but because they\u2019re too interesting.<\/p>\n<p>For more Octopus-amazement, see my review of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vweisfeld.com\/?p=6711\"><em>The Soul of an Octopus<\/em> <\/a>by Sy Montgomery.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several compelling articles about the octopus have emerged lately from the laboratories of marine biology (like this one in Wired 10\/2013, by author Katherine Harmon Courage who\u2019s written a whole book on the topic). They\u2019ve dangled fascinating information in front &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3757\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Why I Don\u2019t Eat Octopus","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,104],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-3757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","tag-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-YB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8727,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions\/8727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}