Sy Montgomery: When I would visit my octopus friend, Octavia, at New E...

It’s an important time to be writing about the connections we share with our fellow creatures. It’s a great time to be alive.

Sy Montgomery

connections important writing

It was not that I disliked people; some of them were interesting and kind. But even the nice ones were no more compelling or important to me than other creatures. Then, as now, to me humans are but one species among billions of other equally vivid and thrilling lives. I was never drawn to other children simply because they were human. Humans seemed to me a rather bullying species, and I was on the side of the underdog.

Sy Montgomery

bullying nature children

Go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that. I wish for you the insight to recognize the blessings as such, and sometimes it's hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It's your job to recognize them.

Sy Montgomery

teacher inspirational jobs

I had nixed the idea of having children when I was myself a child, having learned in the 1960s that human overpopulation was literally crowding other species off the planet. Why create another mouth to gnaw at the overburdened earth?

Sy Montgomery

nature animal children

Human relationships with predators have always been thorny. Predators are the first creatures our kind purposely eradicates. Too often, people feel humans are and should be in control; we are enraged to discover this is not true. And when other creatures share our appetites and kill our livestock (often animals we were raising to kill, ourselves), we call them vandals and murderers...Predators are the most persecuted creatures on Earth.

Sy Montgomery

nature animal people

I never met a pig I didn't like. All pigs are intelligent, emotional, and sensitive souls. They all love company. They all crave contact and comfort. Pigs have a delightful sense of mischief; most of them seem to enjoy a good joke and appreciate music. And that is something you would certainly never suspect from your relationship with a pork chop.

Sy Montgomery

emotional intelligent pigs

Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby.

Sy Montgomery

fighting zoos baby

To get to know someone so different from myself as an octopus, and to know that the individual recognised me and even enjoyed my company, was an enormous privilege. The octopuses I came to know were strong but gentle, and the suction of their suckers tasting my skin pulled me like an alien's kiss.

Sy Montgomery

kiss skin myself me

I think all animals have souls. I feel certain that if we have souls, octopuses have souls, too. If you grant something a soul, it demands a certain level of sacredness. Look around us. The world is holy. It is full of souls.

Sy Montgomery

look you soul world

The fact that three-fifths of an octopus' neurons are not in their brain, but in their arms, suggests that each arm has a mind of its own.

Sy Montgomery

fact own mind brain

Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are.

Sy Montgomery

fish how far-away color

We split from our common ancestor with the octopus half a billion years ago. And yet, you can make friends with an octopus.

Sy Montgomery

you friends half years

Anthropomorphism is such an interesting concept. It means projecting human thoughts and emotions onto an animal. Which implies that thoughts and feelings belong to humans alone. Of course, if you believe in evolution, or if you believe in the Bible, that's not so. Both evolution and the Bible tell us that we're part of a family.

Sy Montgomery

thoughts alone you family

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it!

Sy Montgomery

you smart dog home

I have thought for a long time that one day, if I finally got to deserve it, I would love to write about the minds of invertebrates.

Sy Montgomery

day time love long

I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange.

Sy Montgomery

alien loved always strange

Experiments at Seattle aquarium prove that octopuses can tell individual humans apart - even when the people are dressed identically - just by looking up at them through the water.

Sy Montgomery

looking prove water people

The purpose of fear, clearly, is to help you get away - which it does. If your heart rate increases, there is more blood pumping so you can use that blood to fuel your muscles to run away. Oxygen is sent to the lungs so you can run fast. Pupils dilating help you see in the dark. All of that prepares your body to fight or escape.

Sy Montgomery

fight you fear heart

When I would visit my octopus friend, Octavia, at New England aquarium, usually she would look me in the face, flow right over to see me, and flush red with emotion when she took my arms in hers. Often when I'd stroke her she'd turn white beneath my touch, the colour of a relaxed octopus.