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

The new octopus, also a giant Pacific octopus, is young—perhaps less than nine months old—and thus small. Montgomery estimates that she is about half the size of Octavia when the latter first arrived. Because she has a spot on her head that never changes color with the rest of her skin, Bill has named her Kali, after the Hindu goddess of creative destruction (who also happens to have multiple arms). Montgomery has considered getting an octopus of her own to observe at home, despite the expense and copious work involved, but in the end decides to keep visiting the New England Aquarium instead. There she can tap into the expertise of the staff and volunteers, many of whom have become her friends. She coordinates her visits with Wilson’s, meeting on what they call “Wonderful Wednesdays.”

On her second visit, Montgomery joins a small group of people interacting with Kali, who by all indications promises to be a friendly and outgoing octopus. She explains that such animal–human interaction was not common until 15 years earlier, and the New England Aquarium was a pioneer in this transformation. It was not the staff, however, but two volunteers (both named Marion) who led the change. The first began touching and interacting with an octopus while the second did the same with anacondas that nobody had dreamed of touching before then. They discovered that the animals responded to human interaction: It kept them from getting bored and made handling the animals less stressful on them.

Montgomery also finds herself growing closer to the people she interacts with at the aquarium. From the start, she’s enjoyed the company of Bill, Scott, and Wilson, but now she also gets to know some of the volunteers. She describes a “cephaloparty” after hours at the aquarium and the quirky group of octopus lovers she’s become acquainted with. It’s through playing with Kali that she learns more about their lives. A young volunteer named Christa tells them all about her twin brother Danny, who has a developmental disorder but is obsessed with octopuses. Montgomery also meets another volunteer named Anna, a rising high school junior with Asperger’s syndrome who has had fish tanks since she was two. From her “Wonderful Wednesdays,” she has gotten to know more about Wilson’s interesting journey from Iran (his birthplace) to America. For one reason or another, they all feel a bit misunderstood, somehow out of step with society.

Belonging to a group is a fundamental human need, one that scientists believe may have contributed to evolving their brains by keeping track of social relationships. Octopuses, on the other hand, are largely solitary creatures, so Montgomery wonders what their intelligence is used for. One researcher tells her that what “got them their smarts isn’t the same thing that got us our smarts” (81). Octopuses originally had a protective shell, but once they lost that over time and became mobile, their intelligence was needed to avoid predators. A soft body full of protein seems like an easy target for aquatic hunters, so octopuses evolved ways of tricking them, like camouflage, shape-shifting, and even using tools. All this involves some knowledge of other beings’ behavior—and thus their minds—a rather advanced cognitive skill known as the “theory of mind.”