The Soul of an Octopus

by Sy Montgomery

  Wilson was used to being misunderstood. In a world that demands conformity, in a culture that values animals little, and aquatic animals least of all, we all were. Perhaps that’s what helped us bond around a barrel containing a slimy invertebrate that most people considered a monster.

  Relatively few people understand, for instance, why Marion would even go into an exhibit filled with giant constricting snakes. “Do you think they know you?” people would ask. Of course the snakes knew her, and liked her. And she loved them. Marion wept when Ashley died in summer 2011. Scott understood her feelings perfectly; the moment he’d gotten the call, at 4 a.m. on New Year’s Day, that Ashley had given birth, Scott had left his baby son, born just five days before, to rush to the aquarium and tend to the newborn anacondas.

  Anna, like all teenagers, feels misunderstood, too. Though a twin, like Christa, Anna is nothing like her athletic, outgoing brother. Extremely smart and forthright, she tells us unabashedly that she is enrolled in a “special” school; that she has Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism; that she suffers from migraines, attention deficit disorder, low blood pressure (which once caused her to faint in the anaconda tank), and a tremor; and that she’s on various medications. At home, her fish, plus her blue-tongued skink, Laila, help her find some peace; but it wasn’t until she started volunteering at the aquarium that she felt truly whole.

  “Going behind the scenes at the aquarium changed my life,” Anna tells us as we stroke Kali. Before and after sixth grade, Anna spent part of her summers at “fish camp” at the aquarium. Then when she was fourteen, she started taking an art class on Saturdays, and after class would take the T to spend the rest of the day at the aquarium. Dave Wedge, the bearded, outgoing former high school teacher who runs the Edge of the Sea exhibit and the Education Center’s Wet Lab, recognized her from fish camp and invited her to see his lab. He told her to meet him in an hour. But Anna had no sense of time and did not own, and could not read, an analog watch. So she waited outside the door to the Wet Lab for an hour—in the pouring rain. Dave was so impressed that, even though Anna was too young to be an official volunteer, he started finding things for her to do behind the scenes.

  Now an official volunteer, Anna not only has a digital watch (and knows how to read it), but she also knows the common and Latin names for every marine vertebrate and invertebrate in the aquarium. She apologizes that she hasn’t memorized all the ones in Freshwater yet.

  “The people here are as different from regular people as an octopus. I feel at home here,” Anna says, speaking for all of us, “like I belong.”

  Belonging to a group is one of humankind’s deepest desires. We’re a social species, like our primate ancestors. Evolutionary biologists suggest that keeping track of our many social relationships over our long lives was one of the factors driving the evolution of the human brain. In fact, intelligence itself is most often associated with similarly social and long-lived creatures, like chimps, elephants, parrots, and whales.

  But octopuses represent the opposite end of this spectrum. They are famously short-lived, and most do not appear to be social. There are intriguing exceptions: Male and female lesser Pacific striped octopuses, for instance, sometimes cohabit in pairs, sharing a single den. Groups of these octopuses may live in associations of forty or more animals—a fact so unexpected that it was disbelieved and unpublished for thirty years, until Richard Ross of the Steinhart Aquarium recently raised the long-forgotten species in his home lab. But the giant Pacific, at least, is thought to seek company only at the end of its life, to mate. And even that is an iffy proposition, as one known outcome is the literal dinner date, when one octopus eats the other. If not to interact with fellow octopuses, what is their intelligence for? If octopuses don’t interact with each other, why would they want to interact with us?

  Jennifer, the octopus psychologist, says, “The same thing that got them their smarts isn’t the same thing that got us our smarts.” Octopus and human intelligence evolved separately and for different reasons. She believes the event driving the octopus toward intelligence was the loss of the ancestral shell. Losing the shell freed the animal for mobility. An octopus, unlike a clam, does not have to wait for food to find it; the octopus can hunt like a tiger. And while most octopuses love crab best, a single octopus may hunt many dozens of different prey species, each of which demands a different hunting strategy, a different skill set, a different set of decisions to make and modify. Will you camouflage yourself for a stalk-and-ambush attack? Shoot through the sea with your siphon for a quick chase? Crawl out of the water to capture escaping prey?

  Losing the shell entailed a trade-off: Now that the animal is “a big packet of unprotected protein,” as one researcher put it, just about anything big enough to eat it will do so. Octopuses are well aware of their vulnerability and make plans to protect themselves. Jennifer saw this clearly when she was watching a common octopus in Bermuda on an expedition in the 1980s. Returning home from a hunting expedition, the octopus was clearing the front of the den with its arms. Then, suddenly, it left the den, crawled a meter away, picked up a rock, and placed it in front of the den. Two minutes later, the octopus ventured forth again to select a second rock, and then a third. Attaching its suckers to both rocks, it lugged the load home, slid through its den opening, and then carefully arranged the rocks in front of the lair like a stone fortress in front of a castle. What the octopus was thinking seemed obvious, Jennifer said: “ ‘Three rocks are enough. Good night!’ ” Now it felt safe enough to go to sleep.

  In 2009, researchers in Indonesia documented octopuses that were carrying around pairs of half coconut shells, which they used as portable Quonset huts. With obvious effort, the octopuses would lug the shell halves, nested one inside the other, beneath their bodies as they walked stiff-armed across the sandy bottom, then assemble the half shells into a sphere and climb inside. At the Middlebury octopus lab, assistant animal caretaker Caroline Clarkson noticed another instance of tool use. A sea urchin was feeding too near the entrance of the den belonging to a female California two-spot. So the octopus ventured out of her lair to pick up a 3.5 by 3.5-inch piece of flat slate lying six inches away and dragged it back to the den, where she erected it like a shield to protect herself from the urchin’s spines.

  From building shelters to shooting ink to changing color, the vulnerable octopus must be ready to outwit dozens of species of animals, some of which it pursues, others it must escape. How do you plan for so many possibilities? Doing so demands, to some degree, anticipating the actions—in other words, imagining the minds—of other individuals.

  The ability to ascribe thoughts to others, thoughts that might differ from our own, is a sophisticated cognitive skill, known as “theory of mind.” Once it was thought to be unique to humans. In typical children, theory of mind is believed to emerge around age three or four. The classic experiment goes like this: A toddler views a video of a girl who leaves a box of candy behind in her room. While she’s gone, an adult replaces the candy in the box with pencils. Now the child comes back to open up her box again. The experimenter asks the tot, what does the little girl expect to find in the box? The toddler will say: pencils. Only an older child will understand that the little girl would expect to find candy, even though that’s not what’s really there.

  Theory of mind is considered an important component of consciousness, because it implies self-awareness. (I think this, but you might think that.) Dr. Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, recently demonstrated that dogs understand that others might have knowledge that they do not possess. As an experiment, he presented dogs with two smell-proof containers, one with food, one without. The dogs quickly figured out that the people knew what they did not, and would follow a human’s pointing finger to the hidden treats.

  This is precisely what Nancy King’s octopus, Ollie, was doing when she followed her finger to discover the crab she couldn’t find by herself.

  Of course, there are
many other examples. The birds of prey with whom falconers hunt look to the falconer, or to her dogs, to flush game. African honey badgers follow certain birds (known as honey guides) to find bees’ nests. Both parties seem to realize that when badgers open up the nests to eat the honey, the birds can then feast on the bee larvae.

  But of all the creatures on the planet who imagine what is in another creature’s mind, the one that must do so best might well be the octopus—because without this ability, the octopus could not perpetrate its many self-preserving deceptions. An octopus must convince many species of predators and prey that it is really something else. Look! I’m a blob of ink. No, I’m a coral. No, I’m a rock! The octopus must assess whether the other animal believes its ruse or not, and if not, try something different. In Jennifer’s book, she and her coauthors report that specific displays are directed at particular species under specific conditions. The Passing Cloud display, for instance, is used by an octopus to scare an immobile crab into moving and thus giving itself away. But to fool a hungry fish, an octopus is more likely to use a different strategy: to rapidly change color, pattern, and shape. Most fish have excellent visual memories for particular search images, but if the octopus changes from dark to pale, jets away, and then turns on stripes or spots, the fish can’t keep track of it.

  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.

  And right now, she’s working the crowd. Kali is curious about her company—and what is more endearing than someone showing interest in you? She explores Brendan and his girlfriend with the tip of her second left arm while she investigates the two educators by folding a sucker around their fingertips. She flips upside down, unfurling the creamy suckers on her arms like a blooming flower. Christa, Anna, Marion, and I offer our hands and forearms; she attaches her suckers and pulls gently, seemingly playful. Her skin mottles; she creates thorns and horns; she pulls her head up and lets me pet it again, now going white beneath my touch. Her eye rolls. She is looking for Wilson. She finds his face, and two of her arms rise up and envelop his arm like two slices of bread around sandwich filling.

  Bill, watching the scene from behind us, is delighted. Kali is active, interested, friendly, and outgoing. “She’s going to be a wonderful octopus for display,” he says proudly.

  Even though it’s not a Wednesday, Wilson and I have made a special trip to the aquarium. Today we are celebrating Christa and Danny’s birthday. With the cooperation of Bill and Scott, we’re here to share Christa’s surprise for her brother.

  Last night, Danny took the bus from their parents’ home in Methuen to Christa’s apartment in Boston. At 11:15 a.m. Wilson and I are waiting, ready for Christa to bring her brother behind the scenes on the third floor.

  “He was always reading encyclopedias,” she boasts. “My sister and I would glance at them, but he would read them. My mother ended up getting a lot of encyclopedias,” she said. Danny’s favorite entry, since he was thirteen, was the octopus. What about octopuses most fascinates him? “Their appearance,” he says. “How smart they are. They’re covered with suction cups!”

  Last night, Christa says, she read my article in Orion to Danny. She whispers conspiratorially to me, “He said, ‘Can you imagine getting to touch an octopus?’ ” All he knew yesterday about today’s plan was that they were going to the aquarium together. “So we’ll see the octopus today,” he had said to her this morning. “It’s going to be a good day.”

  He has no idea what we have in store.

  Wilson leads Danny over to Octavia’s tank. “Guess whose tank this is?” Christa asks him.

  Danny’s eyes widen. “The Big O?”

  Wilson attempts to attract Octavia, proffering a fish in the tongs. Christa, Danny, and I rush downstairs to the public viewing area to see how Octavia reacts. Danny waves at her through the glass. Octavia ignores the tongs at first. Finally she grabs them with two arms, three arms—and turns bright red. The fish drops. She doesn’t want to eat. She lets go of the tongs and Wilson withdraws them.

  Wilson appears in front of the tank with us. “Did he see that?”

  “That was amazing!” says Danny. That was surprise enough for him. But then we go back upstairs and stand by Kali’s pickle barrel. Wilson starts unscrewing the lid.

  “Hey, Danny, check this out,” Christa says as Kali, dark reddish brown, floats to the surface.

  “I always thought there was just one octopus in this place!” Danny says. Wilson extends his hand and Kali covers it with her suckers.

  Danny begins to shake with excitement. “Here, give her a fish,” Wilson says to him. “Put it in the sucker and let her take it,” he urges.

  Danny holds the fish, but he is leery at first. “I think she’s grabbing!”

  “Let it go—let her take it,” says Wilson. “She won’t hurt you. Put your hand in the water!”

  Kali’s head and three of her arms are now out of the water, coming up over the edge of the tank: She is eager to greet us. We’re all petting her and urging Danny to do the same. But he’s frightened. He pokes at a single sucker with one finger and withdraws, shaking. He can’t help it: Later he tells me he was thinking of a TV show in which he saw an octopus as big as a building attacking people.

  Suddenly, a fountain of water gushes up from the barrel. “That’s her saying hi to you!” says Christa. This is followed by another gusher, and then a much taller spout—hosing Danny right in the face.

  This doesn’t bother him a bit. He looks no more or less dazed than he did before. He is in the dazzling presence of an octopus, thrilling and frightening at the same time.

  Dripping, Danny reaches a finger out to touch one of Kali’s suckers.

  “I do have a frozen octopus in my freezer,” he says to me, “but that one’s dead.”

  Kali starts to heave her gelatinous mass out of the tank toward us. “Here she comes!” says Christa. Wilson and I try to urge some of her arms back in the water. Kali attaches her suckers to our arms. “She’s much more eager to touch me than him,” Wilson says to me. “It’s the nervousness. She can feel his nervousness. I’ve never seen it more clearly than that.”

  “If you were a crab or a fish,” Wilson tells Danny, “she’d move you all the way down to her mouth. But you’re a human so she won’t.” Instead he hands Danny another fish. “Let it go. She’ll take it.”

  And she does.

  “Oh, this is awesome!” says Danny. He waves at her, wiggling the fingers of his left hand.

  And now he feels safe enough to give her his hand. Kali gently attaches five suckers, then ten, and now perhaps twenty to the palm of his hand. “She feels like a rubber glove!” Danny says.

  “His nervousness is decreasing and she’s more willing to interact,” says Wilson. “She has much more awareness of us than we do of her.”

  “I think she really likes me!” Danny says to us, astonished.

  “Her name is Kali,” Christa says.

  “Hi, Kali,” Danny says, as if to a person. She is moving, sucker by sucker, up the side of the pickle barrel, rolling forward like a Slinky.

  But now Wilson feels we might be in danger of exhausting her. He puts the top back on.

  Danny is starstruck. “I petted a live octopus at the aquarium!” he cries. “Wow, that was adventurous! I can’t wait to tell my parents! She liked me, too!”

  And there’s more. Now Wilson brings out a jar and removes the blue surgical glove covering the top. Inside, about an inch long, black, chitinous, and in two interlocking, curved pieces, is one of Wilson’s prize possessions.

&n
bsp; “Do you know what this is?” he asks Danny.

  “A shell?”

  “No—”

  Danny remembers a picture from the encyclopedia. “It looks like an octopus beak!”

  “This was the beak of a very old octopus,” says Wilson. It was George’s beak. “And it’s for you.”

  Danny is stunned.

  “What do you think?” asks Christa.

  “It came from a real octopus!”

  Wilson has brought another gift for Danny from his collection: a mounted photo of George by photographer Jeffrey Tillman. “I’ll put it in my room,” says Danny, awed. “All I have to do is put in a nail. I’ll put it right by my bed.”

  Danny and Christa and I will spend the rest of our day together at the aquarium, but Wilson has to leave early. He got the call earlier this morning: There is a bed for his wife in a nearby hospice. If she is going to take it, she must move today. The doctors still don’t understand what is wrong with her, only that her self and her strength are ebbing away, and there seems no stopping it. Wilson’s afternoon will be spent getting his wife, with whom he’s traveled the world, ready for her final journey. He is making plans himself to move from their large, beautiful home, with its huge kitchen with tiles around the stove and many bedrooms for visiting guests and grandchildren and Debbie’s home office. Preparing to move to a smaller place, Wilson is giving away treasures—he has given Christa and Marion and me coral and shells and books, and donated large specimens to the aquarium. And yet, in the face of looming tragedy, Wilson has chosen to be with us this morning, celebrating the birthdays of these two young, happy people.