The Soul of an Octopus - Sy Montgomery - Part 2

The Soul of an Octopus - Sy Montgomery

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 116

  April 26, 2017 

Book 34 - The Soul of an Octopus -
A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Sy Montgomery (2015)
 Part 2 - pages 61-124
Reading Time - 1 hour

Sooo... a few other things... Octopus breed towards the end of their lives... and after they do that, they die. Which is kind of sad. Most of them are solitary but scientists have discovered a colony in the South Pacific that live more communally.

The author muses on why octopus are so smart. One reason might be that, lacking any form of hard protection, octopus have had to learn how to adapt to catch prey and escape predators. Not just one prey or one predator, but many. So they need to figure out quickly what camouflage might work best.

Another cool thing is that they can regrow limbs. Not quite like the starfish, because the replacement limbs on a starfish aren't as good as the originals. But with an octopus, replacement limbs are perfect copies of the original.

Octopus change colours and red means they are excited. White generally means they are calm and relaxed. The author talked about how the colours and patterns on their skin were always changing as humans interacted with them. They can make any sort of pattern - lines, stars, grids, whatever. Which got me to thinking... if we can't see polarized light... is it possible that the patterns on the skin are a form of communication? And it's not just colour patterns, their skin can get all nubbly with little bumps and projections. Just makes me wonder.

Tidbit - sea anemones show no signs of aging... so they could theoretically live almost forever.