The Soul of an Octopus

this is not a science book. it's findings are the definition of banal, though it hardly focuses on that, instead focusing more on being a autobiography in disguise, though even those parts are still boring drivel. even outside of the moral implications of the author being totally okay with keeping a creature she considers sentient and her friend captive for its entire life, this book is just badly though out and esoteric

I wanted to like this so bad, I really love octopi so I was very excited and it was just so boring and painful to get through

I learned a lot reading this book, and felt a lot of emotion—which surprised me. I always knew octopuses were smart, but didn't understand the extent to which they felt, remembered and lived. Truly lovely!

Also, I love the Boston aquarium, so it was nice reading a text set there. :)

Great story. Told really well. But I didn't like finding out that the Octopuses were pulled from the ocean and then put into these situations. Yes, we learn from them, but that was disheartening to learn. I have a love/hate relationship with zoos as well. I love that we can see the animals and learn from them, and some of them are no longer able to survive on their own in the wild. And many are in a conservation type role now as well for many species. Thus love/hate.

Anyway, I knew that Octopuses were very intelligent creatures. But this book gave insights that I wasn't expecting.

An interesting and engaging book about a naturalist entering the world of aquarists and octopuses in particular. With descriptions of encounters and interactions aplenty, this book brings out the wondrous frontier of the emerging study of the lives of octopuses, both in the wild and in captivity. Who needs extra-terrestrials when we have intelligent life so different from our own right here on this planet?

I've been going through something of an octopus obsession lately. I got a bit more than I bargained for with this book: Sy Montgomery is wide-eyed and tender on what it means to relate to another being, whether cephalopodic or human. I would recommend having at least a few tissues on hand while reading this.

I've heard about this book for a while and finally decided to read it because it's on the summer reading list for the high school in the town where I work. I LOVED it. I can understand how the author got so emotionally attached to these wonderful creatures because I also did by just reading along!

A great read for anyone who loves animals and suspects that they are a lot smarter than we think they are.

Well, if you want to never eat sushi again, this is the book for you. I've long known octopuses are bizarre, incredible, and intelligent creatures, but this book does a fantastic job exploring the writer's journey into learning just how bizarre, incredibly, and intelligent they are. I learned stuff. I cried about dead octopuses. I changed my opinions on aquariums multiple times. It's emotional, thought-provoking, and pretty much guarantees my takoyaki eating days are over.

Naturalist Sy Montgomery takes us into the world of the octopus, and it's a world we had no idea existed. Montgomery first befriends an octopus at the New England Aquarium near her home, and Montgomery's captivation with the octopus soon becomes our captivation with the octopus. We discover the color-changing abilities of the octopus, the many ways octopuses evidence their abilities to learn, the curiosity of the octopus, as Montgomery takes us with her to her aquarium, to other aquariums, to the Gulf of Mexico, and even to the reefs of French Polynesia.

I never would have suspected that I could fall in love with an invertebrate.

A cute memoir interspersing one person's life with her learning about and meeting octopuses, primarily in the Boston aquarium, but also learning to SCUBA. It's definitely not an expert work on octopus physiology, and while it touches on consciousness, it's definitely not a philosophical work either. But it's fun, the otcopuses pictures are beautiful, it just overall seems a little shallow. I think I would have preferred a slightly deeper work.

Very interesting in parts, if this was a long article I would consider it a fantastic read and share it with friends and heap so much praise on it. Instead it's ultra padded out to justify selling as a book, to the point I feel a little used for having being convinced to purchase it.

That's the reason for the 1 star, that feeling of being tricked. It's highly subjective, I know.

Then again, so was this book.

What a fascinating subject. At times this got a bit long-winded - especially noticeable because I listened to it on audio - but it made a great commute “read.”

Hey! A fun book (with pictures) about octopuses! And octopuses is the correct plural form since the root word is from Greek, not Latin. The author spends a lot of time at the New England Aquarium and gets to know several Giant Pacific octopuses. She also learns to scuba dive so she can observe them in the wild as well. At barely 250 pages, this is a great introduction to a fascinating animal. Among other things I learned that octopuses taste with their skin; most of their neurons are not in the brains, but in their arms; they are very strong – one sucker might lift 30 pounds, and that they would be crazy-expensive pets.

In principe is dit een boek dat ik enorm graag zou lezen. Octopussen zijn wijs en wonderbaarlijk en interessant. Ze leven een handvol jaar, ze zijn intelligent, maar dan op een volledig andere manier dan wij ons kunnen voorstellen, maar dan weer niet helemaal anders want we delen nog altijd een aantal zaken van heel erg ver terug in de evolutie van het leven.

Helaas: dit is meer een lang soort mijmering van iemand die professioneel over beesten schrijft, die bijna toevallig met octopussen in aanraking komt in haar lokale aquarium, en dan een hele reeks anecdotes en episodes uit haar leven beschrijft.

Over de mensen die ook fans zijn van octopussen, en over hoe ze wil leren duiken, en over het leven en de dood van een paar octopussen die ze ontmoet heeft.

Zeer spijtig dat het allemaal wat op de vlakte bleef. Een degelijke documentaire lijkt mij interessanter dan een al met al niet zo interessant boek, met kleine zwartwitfotootjes erin.

En dat kan dan zelfs zeer kort zijn, zoals deze van Ze Frank:

I was interested to read this book after hearing a interview with the author on Fresh Air. And it turns out that's all I needed to hear. The first chapter starts off interestingly, but immediately devolves into a memoir about the author's friends at the aquarium, what goes on in other tanks, and the author's foray into scuba diving with very little science about octopuses.

Hearing about how Ms. Montgomery's hands got cold because she's constantly got her hands in an octopus tank or what the fish looks like as it travels along the suckers to the octopus' mouth is not telling me anything about the consciousness of octopuses. In fact, the descriptions of Kali constantly attempting to get out of the tiny, biting barrel/prison and finally being tired of playing with her prisoners was sad. If this animal has as much intelligence and consciousness as the author suggests, why was captive treatment with little stimuli other than people sticking their hands all over you at all okay? Is it any surprise that Kali appears to commit suicide (sources of water were nearby and the staff couldn't understand why she ended up on the floor)?

So, if you're looking for a memoir about an author that likes going to an aquarium, this is the book for you. The writing is okay, I suppose, but so far off topic that it didn't matter.

A charming account of the ways that intelligent species, even ones as different as octopuses and humans, can touch each others' lives. The book is focused more on telling a personal story than on explaining hard science, but many interesting scientific facts are brought up as asides.

Pastel-coloured, boogly-eyed, and tentacled: these are the primary descriptors for a particular brand of cute I???m especially fond of. Two out of three of those descriptors make sense to a broad swathe of people: pastel colours are often associated with infants and, therefore, fall into a commonly-understood spectrum of cute; same thing goes for big eyes. But tentacled? When one is looking at a squid or cuttlefish in a market, it can be hard to think of it as anywhere near ???cute???, and far easier to be reminded of H.P. Lovecraft???s eldritch horrors.

But cephalopods???a group of animals that includes squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses (not, as I used to think, ???octopi???)???can be cute as well, in ways that can easily appeal to a broad range of people. Take this tiny deep-sea octopus that scientists are considering naming Opistoteuthis adorabilis because it is just so gosh-darn cute (click here for a video). When one sees the animal alive and in motion in its natural element, instead of dead and limp on a fishmonger???s table, it becomes easy to see why they can be such fascinating creatures???and, yes, even cute.

However, there is more to cephalopods than just being cute, especially when one talks about octopuses. Zookeepers working at marine parks and aquariums tell almost-unbelievable stories of octopuses not only escaping their tanks when the lights go out for the night, but sometimes leaving to go fishing in other tanks, before returning to their own tanks and closing the lids behind them as if nothing had happened. Biologists specialising in animal behaviour are now backing up these stories with hard evidence: several studies show that octopuses are far smarter than initially expected???possibly enough to be self-aware in the same way humans are.

The question of the octopus??? ability to be self-aware is one that Sy Montgomery attempts to answer in The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness. Octopuses, Montgomery states, are very different from humans: they live in the ocean; they have a beak like a bird and venom like a snake; they have no bones; and they have four more limbs than humans do. Even evolution itself divides us from octopuses: ???[m]ore than half a billion years??? is the point when the evolutionary path diverges, and one branch leads to humans, while another leads to octopuses. Montgomery puts it best: ???Octopuses represent the great mystery of the Other.???

And yet it is that vast, seemingly unbridgeable gap between our species and the octopus that intrigues Montgomery, leading her to ask some interesting questions:

I wanted to meet an octopus. I wanted to touch an alternate reality. I wanted to explore a different kind of consciousness, if such a thing exists. What is it like to be an octopus? Is it anything like being a human? Is it even possible to know?

The entirety of The Soul of an Octopus is an attempt to answer that question, as Montgomery pays a visit to the New England Aquarium, and has her first octopus encounter with Athena, a Pacific giant octopus, under the gentle, learned guidance of aquarist Scott Dowd. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, including her own personal experience, Montgomery explores the idea that there are other intelligences on our planet other than our own???and that of all those intelligences, the octopus just might be the most fascinating, and the closest to what we might call ???human???.

Now, it must be said that Montgomery is a very good storyteller; she has a way of weaving fact and personal narrative together so that the reader can go from one to the other without the slightest hitch, as shown in the excerpt below:

At the [New England Aquarium] Wilson [Menashi] had been tasked with an important mission: designing interesting toys to keep the intelligent octopus occupied. ???If they have nothing to do, they become bored,??? Bill [Murphy] explained. And boring your octopus is not only cruel; it???s a hazard. I knew from living with two border collies and a 750-pound pet pig that to allow a smart animal to become bored is to court disaster. They will invariably come up with something creative to do with their time that you don???t want them to do, as the Seattle Aquarium discovered with Lucretia McEvil. In Santa Monica, a small California two-spot octopus, only perhaps eight inches long, managed to flood the aquarium???s offices with hundreds of gallons of water by experimenting with a valve in her tank, causing thousands of dollars??? worth of damage by ruining the brand-new, ecologically designed floors.

Such an ability is a blessing in a non-fiction writer, and whenever I find an author with such a gift, I take careful note of the author???s name so that I may track down the rest of their work. Thanks to this book, I will take the time to track down her other work, because the quality of her storytelling is close to impeccable, and is something other non-fiction writers should aspire to.

However, for all that this book is a good chronicle of one woman???s friendship with four octopuses and the people who look after them and are enthusiastic about them, it is far too light on the science for my taste. The title promises ???A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness???, but it doesn???t quite fulfil that promise. To be sure, Montgomery peppers her narrative with scientific facts, psychological explorations, and philosophical quotations about the nature of the mind and consciousness, but those digressions are not the focus of the book; rather, the focus of this book is a woman???s friendship with four octopuses and the people who look after them. While that suits the first part of the title just fine, it leaves the second part of the title unfulfilled. I picked up this book expecting a scientific exploration of the nature of non-human consciousness with the octopus as it???s focus, not a memoir.

This means that I found nothing truly ???surprising??? about Montgomery???s narrative, because what she discusses is familiar to anyone who cares for animals, no matter their species. Humans form attachments to their pets, and science is gradually beginning to prove that pets form attachments to their owners. What Montgomery writes about is not necessarily about how octopuses are ???intelligent??? or ???conscious???, scientifically speaking, but how she thinks they are intelligent and conscious, how she thinks they have a soul because of her personal experience with them, and the people who find their lives improved by being in contact with them. While there is no denying that octopuses are incredible, extraordinary animals, and that they are remarkably intelligent as well, the question of whether or not they are conscious, or possessed of self-awareness, is still up in the air???and is a question Montgomery does not answer with any scientific accuracy.

This, then, means I find the book rather disappointing. I went into it looking for science, after all, and while I understand???indeed, enjoy it???when popular science writers include personal anecdotes into their writing, as a rule the best popular science writers focus on the science, not their personal experiences. Switching focus from one to the other means that one is writing a memoir, not popular science. Though the full title of The Soul of an Octopus, and even its blurb promises popular science, it quickly becomes obvious that this is, in fact, a memoir. I may have found Montgomery???s prose engaging enough that I kept reading anyway, but that mild sense of disappointment still lingered when I finished the book, and has, therefore, tainted my opinion of this book.

Overall, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness has a rather deceptive title. If the reader expects a memoir of a woman recounting her extraordinary experiences with octopuses and the people who love them, then this is precisely the book they are looking for. However, if the reader is looking for a more scientific exploration of the nature of consciousness in non-human species, even one that is peppered with personal anecdotes, then said reader will be sadly disappointed: The Soul of an Octopus does not contain nearly enough science to satisfy even the casual popular science reader. Any science included in the book is brief, and typically subsumed into Montgomery???s more personal exploration of her experiences and encounters with octopuses and the people who love them. While this can certainly be interesting, and may be enough to keep disappointment at bay long enough to finish the book (as it did with me), some readers might find themselves growing impatient with the text and set it aside???a course of action I certainly cannot blame them for taking.