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

“Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. 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. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart. This bore out what scant experience I had already had; like many who visit octopuses in public aquariums, I’ve often had the feeling that the octopus I was watching was watching me back, with an interest as keen as my own.” 

This appears in the second paragraph, as Montgomery uses a mixture of interesting, little-known facts about octopuses to garner the reader’s interest. It includes facts about their anatomy and references to their intelligence. This also touches on one of the book’s themes: that of octopuses’ vast differences from humans that render them “the Other.” 

“Octopuses represent the great mystery of the Other. They seem completely alien, and yet their world—the ocean—comprises far more of the Earth (70 percent of its surface area; more than 90 percent of its habitable space) than does land. Most animals on this planet live in the ocean. And most of them are invertebrates.” 

Following from the above quotation, Montgomery names octopuses as “the Other,” inhabiting a world so different from our own on land that they appear “alien.” Yet she points out that this world and its creatures are certainly not rare or in the minority, motivating the reader to rethink what it means to be “alien” and who it applies to. The point is that it depends on one’s perspective, and Montgomery intends to shine a light on an octopus’s perspective. 

“The idea of octopuses with thoughts, feelings, and personalities disturbs some scientists and philosophers. Only recently have many researchers accorded even chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of a mind. The idea set forth by French philosopher René Descartes in 1637, that only people think (and therefore, only people exist in the moral universe—‘Je pense, donc je suis’) is still so pervasive in modern science that even Jane Goodall, one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world, was too intimidated to publish some of her most intriguing observations of wild chimpanzees for twenty years.”

Early in the first chapter, Montgomery addresses this topic because it’s one that runs throughout the book. One of her main theses is that octopuses possess the qualities listed in the first sentence. In this quotation, she shows how ingrained the denial of these qualities in animals has been. However, she is careful to note in what follows that applying strictly human traits to animals is also a mistake.