Happy World Octopus Day!

Octopuses might not seem like the most charismatic of characters, but the reading I’ve been doing lately makes me want to do a deep dive and make an octopus best friend pronto.

In honor of World Octopus Day, Jer Thorp told a great story about getting to know an octopus on Storify.

A number of similar stories can be found in Sy Mongomery’s book, The Soul of an Octopus. Montgomery becomes friendly with a number of very different octopuses during the course of researching and writing her book, and she tells the story of each of them with a sensitivity and probing inquisitiveness worthy of an octopus’ tentacle. In this passage, she describes meeting Athena, the New England Aquarium’s octopus at the beginning of her research:

Octopuses can taste with their entire bodies, but this taste is most exquisitely developed in their suckers. Athena’s is an exceptionally intimate embrace. She is at once touching and tasting my skin, and possibly the muscle, bone, and blood beneath. Though we have only just met, Athena already knows me in a way no being has known me before.

Montgomery also explores what we know about a creature that developed its intelligence on a completely different evolutionary branch than ours. The result of this parallel evolution is that, not only are their brains differently distributed physically than ours (they have brain-like functions in each of their “legs,” for instance), but the manifestation of that intelligence may be different than ours.

By the end of the book, it’s impossible not to wonder: how can we test and judge the intelligence of creatures whose intelligence is so foreign? And what can they possibly think of *us*?