{"id":6711,"date":"2017-07-12T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6711"},"modified":"2017-07-12T08:00:59","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T12:00:59","slug":"the-soul-of-an-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6711","title":{"rendered":"****The Soul of an Octopus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

photo: Matt Biddulph, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Sy Montgomery \u2013 The New York Times<\/em> has called naturalist Sy Montgomery<\/a> \u201cequal parts poet and scientist\u201d and the Boston Globe<\/em> says she\u2019s \u201cpart Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson.\u201d Maybe, with all those parts, it\u2019s fitting that this 2015 book\u2014National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness\u2014<\/em>is also about a creature with many parts.<\/p>\n

If we really understood how wondrous octopuses are, we wouldn\u2019t eat them<\/a>. (Their remarkable nature, by the way, extends to the genetic level<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The first thing that\u2019s hard to grasp about octopusus is that almost two-thirds of their neurons are not in their brains, but in their arms. In one early encounter with the octopus Athena, Montgomery says, \u201cUnconstrained by joints, her arms were constantly questing, coiling, stretching, reaching, unfurling, all in different directions at once. Each arm seemed like a separate creature, with a mind of its own. In fact, this is almost literally true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"octopus\"

(photo: wikimedia\/commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

She speculates that this \u201cdistributed intelligence\u201d enables the octopus to multitask. It reduces the burden on the brain to coordinate all those arms, which can change color and surface texture in an instant, camouflaging themselves from predators or potential prey and indicating mood, from calm to distress to happy red (as pictured). The arms, she says, \u201clearn, think, decide, and remember\u2014while at the same time processing the flood of taste and touch information pouring in from every inch of skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

That the information they receive by touch is<\/em> remembered is evident from another powerful theme of Montgomery\u2019s book. Octopuses are not just smart\u2014as she demonstrates in describing their many tricks\u2014they have something akin to an emotional life, evidenced by their relationships with the people around them. (No, they\u2019re not just food-seeking.)<\/p>\n

They can recognize individual people and other animals because of their extraordinary senses. An octopus\u2019s chemoreceptors can detect another\u2019s \u201cscent\u201d from at least thirty yards away, and research suggests their suckers are a hundred times more sensitive than the chemical receptors on your own tongue.<\/p>\n

At Boston\u2019s New England Aquarium<\/a> where Montgomery interacted with several octopuses over a period of years, one\u2014Octavia\u2014was very friendly. As Octavia\u2019s life was coming to a close, she \u00a0laid thousands of eggs, which she obsessively guarded night and day. For many months Montgomery and the caretakers had no physical contact with her. When she was weakening fast, they moved her to a simpler environment without her eggs. Freed from that duty, Octavia\u2019s behavior made it clear she remembered her friends, embracing them as before.<\/p>\n

Read this book and marvel!
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sy Montgomery \u2013 The New York Times has called naturalist Sy Montgomery \u201cequal parts poet and scientist\u201d and the Boston Globe says she\u2019s \u201cpart Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson.\u201d Maybe, with all those parts, it\u2019s fitting that this … Continue reading →<\/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":"****The Soul of an Octopus - talented, smart, and filled with personality, one of nature's most wondrous creatures","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":[267,126],"tags":[73,308,416,1075,1074],"class_list":["post-6711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-nature","tag-octopus","tag-real-life","tag-sy-montgomery","tag-the-soul-of-an-octopus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Kf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6711","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=6711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6713,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6711\/revisions\/6713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}