And the next time I visited her, she pulled a fast one.

She was reluctant to touch me at first, but when she finally did, she nearly pulled me into her tank. She was replaced by Octavia, whose personality was utterly different. What struck me most, and changed me most, about knowing these alien and elastic creatures, was how quickly I came to love them.Īll too soon after I met her, Athena died of old age (giant Pacifics only live 3-5 years). Although we couldn't have been more different - I, a terrestrial vertebrate constrained by joints and bound to air she, a marine mollusk with not a single bone, who breathed water - she was clearly as curious about me as I was about her. Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. As I plunged my hands and arms into the 47 degree water to stroke her, her arms boiled up to cover mine with her strong, white, powerful suckers - suckers with which she was feeling and tasting me at the same time. When the keeper lifted the lid to her tank, she turned red with excitement and slid from her lair to greet me. She was a feisty, elderly female with an armspan of about 10 feet who I met behind the scenes at New England Aquarium.

The octopuses I met were individuals like Athena, the first giant Pacific octopus I ever touched.

But over the three years that I came to know them personally, from the New England Aquarium to the oceans of French Polynesia and Mexico, I came to understand these otherworldly invertebrate animals as exquisitely intelligent, curious, emotional, and playful. To many, an octopus is a scary monster, a gelatinous mass of tentacles, or a cousin of calamari to be served with lemon on the side. I set out to make friends with an octopus - and in so doing, discover a fellow soul. But my objective was more challenging than any I had previously attempted. I've hiked at altitude through the Gobi looking for invisible snow leopards in India, I attempted to track man-eating tigers in Papua, New Guinea, I searched the cloud forests for tree kangaroos.įor my latest book, my initial research expedition seemed modest in comparison: my travels took me merely from our home in New Hampshire to Boston. To research my books, films, and articles, I've been undressed by a curious orangutan in Borneo, swum with pink dolphins and electric eels in the Amazon, and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana.

The soul of an octopus by sy montgomery