After studying many birds, reptiles, and mammals, naturalist Sy Montgomery decided to study something very different from humans. For several years she made the acquaintance of several octopuses, an animal species that could not be more different from human. They live in the sea, they have no bones, and they breathe water. They can change color and shape and squeeze their body through little openings. They taste with their skin and squirt ink and inject venom, and untie surgical silk with their suckers, yet they have some of the same cognitive and emotional capacities that we do and maybe a whole bunch we don’t. She was most surprised to find that they have personalities and even consciousness. Octopuses are highly intelligent, show their cleverness in myriad ways, and love to play. She describes befriending several of them over a number of years and shares how they can make remarkable connections with individual people. This is a most fascinating dialogue about the meeting of two very different minds, human and octopus.
