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

“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. 

“As with a child, to commune with Athena demands a level of openness and intuition greater than that used in the usual discourse between adult humans of a common culture. But Wilson doesn’t equate this strong, smart, wild-caught adult octopus to a baby human—unfinished, incomplete, not quite fully developed. Athena is, in the words of the late, great Canadian storyteller Farley Mowat, ‘more-than-human,’ a being who doesn’t need us to bring her to completion. The wonder is that she will allow us to be part of her world.” 

This quotation highlights the divide between humans and octopuses and attempts to cross that divide. Interacting with octopuses demands a different, more instinctual approach because we come from different “cultures” (in the broadest sense of the term). Montgomery wants readers to know, however, that octopuses are fully formed creatures of their own—without the need for humans.

“While Wilson attended to chores with Bill, Liz and I visited the spiraling walkway that wraps around the Giant Ocean Tank. At the lower levels, electric-blue chromis and flamboyant yellowtail damselfish darted in and out of fiberglass corals; yellowtail snapper swam by in packs, like groups of teens at a mall. Higher up, rays flew by on cartilaginous wings, while their relatives the sharks cruised sinuously and purposefully, as if on urgent errands. Huge turtles oared the water with scaly flippers. Everyone’s favorite, Myrtle, a green sea turtle who weighs 550 pounds, is known as the Queen of the Giant Ocean Tank.” 

This is an example of Montgomery’s colorful writing style, both literally and figuratively. She depicts the watery worlds of the tanks at the aquarium and the open sea, using sensory description and comparisons to allow the reader to imagine them. It also keeps the subject from becoming too clinical and dry, making it more accessible to a wider audience.

“When we went back upstairs to Cold Marine for another try with Octavia, she still wasn’t interested. I tried to fathom her shyness. Why wouldn’t she come over to see us? ‘Everyone is different,’ Wilson reminded us. ‘They have different personalities. Even lobsters have different personalities. You stick around here long enough and you’ll see.’”

This is early in Montgomery’s research, after she had visited with Athena only a few times before the octopus died. She hadn’t yet fully appreciated the differences in the animals’ personalities. Wilson, the longtime volunteer, reminds her of this and uses lobsters as an example—an animal less developed and intelligent than octopuses. The reader thus learns along with Montgomery just how unique each animal can be, even among the least of them.

“An octopus’s muscles have both radial and longitudinal fibers, thereby resembling our tongues more than our biceps, but they’re strong enough to turn their arms to rigid rods—or shorten them in length by 50 to 70 percent. An octopus’s arm muscles, by one calculation, are capable of resisting a pull one hundred times the octopus’s own weight. In Octavia’s case, that could be nearly 4,000 pounds.”

This gives the reader a keen sense of an octopus’s great strength. It’s a bit counterintuitive, given their boneless, shape-shifting bodies, that they can be so strong. It is one of many surprising facts about octopuses that Montgomery learns in her research and conveys in the book. 

“To blend with its surroundings, or to confuse predators or prey, an octopus can produce spots, stripes, and blotches of color anywhere on its body except its suckers and the lining of its funnel and mantle openings. It can create a light show on its skin. One of several moving patterns the animal can create is called ‘Passing Cloud’ because it’s like a dark cloud passing over the landscape—making the octopus look like it’s moving when it’s not. And of course the octopus can also voluntarily control its skin texture—raising and lowering fleshy projections called papillae—as well as change its overall shape and posture.” 

Facts like these, sprinkled throughout the book, help to illustrate just how amazing octopuses are. It’s an example of the many tools octopuses have for presenting themselves to the world and evading predators (not to mention for exploring the world). While other animals might have one or two such features, an octopus can completely transform its shape, alter its color and create patterns, make its skin texture change from completely smooth to extremely bumpy, shoot water from its funnel, and expel ink.

“Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one—which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin. Woods Hole and University of Washington researchers found the skin of the octopus’s close relative, the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the retina of the eye.” 

Here Montgomery presents another fascinating aspect of octopuses, related to their ability to camouflage themselves. Like many facts Montgomery presents about these creatures, it’s surprising: We think of sight as only a function of eyes. This is just one example supporting Montgomery’s claim that we must change our way of thinking to even begin to understand octopuses.

“Many of us respond without thinking to the angle of a horse’s ears, or the position of a dog’s tail, or the expression in a cat’s eyes. Aquarists learn the silent language of fishes. Once, walking into a hallway behind the scenes where some cichlids had just been moved from one tank to another, Scott had announced to me with concern, ‘I smell fish stress.’ The scent is subtle—I cannot smell it at all—but the low-tide odor Scott detects, he explained at the time, is that of heat-shock proteins.”

This quotation gives an example of the aquarium staff’s level of expertise. It shows how they need to develop unusual skills to effectively work with the animals there. Although the example has to do with fish, the same goes for those who work with octopuses. These animals have special needs that are different from those in animals that are more like us, another indication that octopuses represent “the Other.” 

“To survive long enough to meet us at the New England Aquarium, Kali may have met and matched wits with many different species of bird, whale, seal, sea lion, shark, crab, fish, and turtle, as well as other octopuses and human divers—all with different kinds of eyes, different lifestyles, different senses, different motives, different personalities, and different moods. Compared with most people, whose daily lives involve direct interaction with only one species, Kali is a cosmopolitan sophisticate, and we are small-town bumpkins.”

Octopuses seem alien in our world, and humans think of themselves as much more advanced. However, seen from the perspective of their own world, Montgomery notes, octopuses have much more experience interacting with a wide range of the world’s creatures than do humans. 

“During these months, Octavia will give us a close-up and detailed view of her most intimate, ultimate task, far more than would be possible to see in the wild. Her attentions will not be able to transform her infertile eggs into living paralarvae. But other transformations will be revealed around her tank, sometimes thanks to Octavia herself—some of them sad, some of them strange, and some, like Octavia’s eggs, a whispered promise of new life.”

The eggs Octavia lays serve as a reminder of the life cycle. Montgomery strives to keep readers aware of this never-ending cycle of birth, life, and death. While she is sad about the death of creatures she counts as friends, she knows that death is natural and inevitable. This only serves to highlight the importance of valuing life and seeing its splendor in every creature—even those considered “Other.”

“The dish of fish is only an octopus-arm’s length away from her barrel, and Wilson grabs a capelin. He hands it to the suckers of one of her arms. Then Christa places a second fish in the pillowy, white cups of another arm. Instantly Kali becomes exceptionally calm. Lying upside down at the surface, arms splayed, she gives us an extraordinary view of her shiny, black beak. This is the first time even Wilson has seen the beak inside a living octopus. It is a private and trusting moment, her sharing with us this surprising part of her, normally hidden inside at the confluence of her arms.”

This quotation represents the extraordinary bonds that developed between the octopuses at the New England Aquarium and the humans who cared for them. Montgomery’s descriptions of moments like this show how intimate such bonds were. This allows readers to see octopuses in a new light; despite the animals’ obvious differences—their status as “the Other”—they are capable of forging strong connections with people. 

“At times like this, after Kali has been fed, when the front of Octavia’s tank is too crowded for me to observe her, and there’s nothing pressing going on in Cold Marine or Freshwater, Anna, Christa, and I cruise the other tanks of the aquarium, roaming like girls window-shopping downtown. But to us, each tank is more like a station of the cross, a site for a series of devotions. Here we are sanctified, baptized over and over by the beauty and strangeness of the ocean.”

This is another quotation that gives a sense of Montgomery’s writing style. It’s full of fresh comparisons and vivid descriptions that make this watery world more accessible to readers. The religious reference also conveys how Montgomery feels about this world: She not only has a sense of awe for it but feels transformed, much like one who is baptized. 

“Wilson and I stand and watch the octopus, silent. Is Octavia thinking anything at all, and if so, could I understand her thoughts? What is going on in the separate, holy, mysterious, private theater of these minds? Can we ever know the inner experiences of another? Learning, attention, memory, perception—these are all measurable, relatively accessible, amenable to study. But consciousness, says Australian philosopher David Chalmers, is ‘the hard problem,’ precisely because it is so private to each inner self.”

Here Montgomery addresses the main theme of the book: the possibility that octopuses can possess consciousness. The bond she and Octavia share is strong, leading her to wonder what the octopus is thinking, if anything. As she notes, however, consciousness cannot be empirically tested, so it remains a mystery.

“I could stay forever here just watching it breathe. But everyone else deserves to see the octopus too, so I move aside, inventing a new signal for Francisco: my fingertips slightly overlapping, palms toward my chest, bringing my hands in and out toward and away from my hammering heart. But Francisco already knows, has seen the rapture on my face. For more than a year and a half, since meeting Athena, since coming to know Octavia and now Kali, each time I’ve reached into the tanks where we have brought these creatures into our world, I’ve longed to enter theirs. At last, in the warm embrace of the sea, breathing underwater, surrounded by the octopus’s liquid world, my breath rising in silver bubbles like a song of praise, here I am.” 

This quotation illustrates Montgomery’s great wish to meet octopuses on their own terms, in their own world. After getting to know three of them in captivity, she wants to experience the world of the ocean and see octopuses in their natural habitat. This describes the first octopus she sees on her first dive—the moment she’s been waiting for. 

“The desire to change our ordinary, everyday consciousness does not seize everyone, but it’s a persistent theme in human culture. Expanding the mind beyond the self allows us to relieve our loneliness, to connect to what Jung called universal consciousness, the original, inherited shapes shared with all minds; unites us with what Plato called the animus mundi, the all-extensive world soul shared by all of life. Through meditation, drugs, or physical ordeal, certain cultures encourage seeking altered states to commune with the spirits of animals, whose wisdom may seem hidden from us in ordinary life. In my scuba-induced altered state, I’m not in the grip of a drug: I am lucid in my immersion, voluntarily becoming part of what feels like the ocean’s own dream.” 

Following on the previous quotation, Montgomery compares her dive in the ocean to taking mind-altering drugs. The idea of consciousness is central to this, as she refers to accessing a greater consciousness outside her own mind. Her interactions with octopuses at the aquarium have created a desire for a meeting of the minds, and she wonders how she might perceive what they do. Here she refers to the belief some people have of a universal consciousness, throughout all living things, and how that might be accessed. 

“Each octopus arm enjoys a great deal of autonomy. In experiments, a researcher cut the nerves connecting an octopus’s arm to the brain, and then stimulated the skin on the arm. The arm behaved perfectly normally—even reaching out and grabbing food. The experiment demonstrated, as one colleague told National Geographic News, ‘there is a lot of processing of information in the arms that never makes it to the brain.’ As science writer Katherine Harmon Courage put it, the octopus may be able to ‘outsource much of the intelligence analysis [from the outside world] to individual body parts.’ Further, it seems ‘that the arms can get in touch with one another without having to go through the central brain.’ ‘Octopus arms really are like separate creatures,’ Scott agrees.” 

This passage illustrates the possibilities involved in trying to determine whether octopuses have consciousness. It also refers again to the fact that we may have to think in a different manner to even fathom the issue. A human’s idea of consciousness assumes a single, central mind, but given an octopus’s anatomy, their consciousness (if it exists) might be localized and separate. Part of it may reside in each arm, or each arm may have its own consciousness.

“After a play session, we often rest together. She hangs at the top of the barrel, her suckers gently holding us, suspending time. Sometimes, as we watch the play of colors across her skin, it feels like we are watching thoughts flit across her mind. What is she thinking? Does Kali similarly wonder about us, as she tastes the fleeting flavors of the blood flowing beneath our skin? Does she savor our affection, our calm, our delight?” 

This quotation captures the bond between humans and octopus and Montgomery’s continual curiosity about octopuses’ possible consciousness. The first half shows the gentle ease with which Montgomery and her friends interact with Kali. In the second half, Montgomery’s listing of questions highlights the fact that what Kali comprehends is unknowable.

“Kali was extremely lucky to have lived as long as she did. Most octopuses die as paralarvae. Only two in 100,000 hatchlings survive to sexual maturity—otherwise the sea would be overrun with octopuses. ‘And at least we know she had a good last day,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ said Wilson. ‘She had a day of freedom. And that she got out tells you a phenomenally inquisitive and intelligent creature wanted her freedom. We know, clearly, it must have taken a lot of effort to get out. A stupid animal wouldn’t do that.’” 

In this quotation, Montgomery and Wilson discuss Kali’s death, when she escaped from her new tank the first night she occupied it. The great intelligence of octopuses allowed Kali to find a way to escape and provided a motivation for doing so. She was curious and seeking to explore. (In the paragraph that follows, in fact, Montgomery compares her to astronauts and early explorers of Earth.)

“As we wait, I stare into the plastic bag at the new octopus. Part of the second right arm is missing its bottom quarter. What happened? Does the octopus remember? Maybe the memory resides in the lost arm. Or perhaps the other arms know about it, but the brain doesn’t.”

This is when Karma first arrives at the New England Aquarium. More neurons exist in an octopus’s arms than in its brain, and as Quotation 18 makes clear, each arm may have its own memory. Montgomery’s questions here illustrate how she has come to think differently, expanding her notion of consciousness to better fit the model an octopus presents.

“Beneath us, emerald and turquoise parrot fish pluck algae from coral with their beaks—actually mosaics of tightly packed teeth. Each sleeps in its own private mucous cocoon, a slimy sleeping bag secreted from the mouth, to conceal its scent from predators. Parrot fish are sequential hermaphrodites: All are born female, and later transform themselves to males.”

This quotation is an example of how Montgomery introduces the reader to the “alien” world of octopuses. She sprinkles the book with descriptions like this to give one a sense of how different this environment is from our own. It’s part of the idea that we must apply radically different thinking to make sense of such a world, as it contains things that don’t exist in ours. At the same time, by examining and understanding such a world, it becomes less “alien”—less “Other.”

“Then Octavia began to move. Sucker by sucker, she peeled away from the ceiling and sides of her lair, loosening her grip on her precious, shrinking eggs. Finally, only a few suckers of one arm remained in contact with the mass. Her seven other arms began to meander aimlessly along the bottom. Her action mystified us. The sea star was in his usual position, as far from her as he could get. No one was threatening her eggs. There was no food on the bottom. She seemed to be…just wandering.”

Here Montgomery is describing senescence in octopuses. They reach a point in life when they don’t seem to recognize things or people they know; in short, they begin to lose their minds. One researcher compared it to dementia in humans, and Montgomery draws parallels between Octavia’s behavior and that of elderly people she knows in various stages of dementia.

“Finally, Octavia sank to the bottom, still regarding us with her good eye. How tired she must be, I thought, after her rich, full life—a life lived between worlds. She had known the sea’s wild embrace; she had mastered the art of camouflage; she had learned the taste of our skin and the shapes of our faces; she had instinctively remembered how her ancestors wove eggs into chains. She had served as an ambassador for her kind to tens of thousands of aquarium visitors, even transforming disgust to admiration. What an odyssey she had lived.”

Octavia’s life was full of accomplishments that touched many others, both human and animal. Montgomery credits Octavia with allowing people to see octopuses for what they truly are: gentle, intelligent creatures worthy of our admiration. She calls Octavia an ambassador that changed the minds of visitors to the aquarium, and by extension acknowledges her role in doing the same for readers of this book.