Theory of mind is considered an important component of consciousness, because it implies self-awareness. (83)

And while the Kraken may be a myth, there is no shortage of alarming encounters, from native legends to Scheel’s personal experience of Calamity, the captive octopus who had a penchant for squirting water from her tank and attempting to pull aquarists in. Many variations in observed habits are discussed here, but the important thing is that octopuses don’t generally have a long lifespan—usually around two years, though the range is six months to four years, depending on the species. Sexual activity takes place towards the end of the lifespan, the mother often dying shortly after the eggs have successfully hatched. During gestation the mother typically doesn’t eat, neither attracted to food nor interested to attract possible predators to the cave in which she is holed up with a bunch of developing eggs. Her last days are spent spurting oxygenated water over the eggs attached to the walls of caves.

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How then can one begin to describe the inside of Laura, where the child-mind lived in the midst of the familiar relics of the baby-mind, like a Fascist in Rome? VAN PELT: He really does believe that he is the superior species. And he has endless amounts of time to watch the humans. And he has a very sharp observational capacity. And I think he relieves a lot of his boredom by sort of, you know, creating these little soap opera moments and just really honing his observations and his thoughts about humans and how we operate. If you were an octopus you could do this: first change colour, turning as dark as ink, then release a cloud of real ink mixed with mucus which holds its shape in the water just like a decoy octopus, then instantly turn pale again and glide serenely away while the predator is still fumbling with the decoy. Sy Montgomery's book, The Soul of an Octopus is an antidote to these negative perceptions, and does an excellent job of showing how amazing and intriguing Octopuses are, and the relationships that humans can have with them. Beyond that, however, this book didn't live up to my expectations.

FLORIDO: Well one of the humans he observes is Tova, who's 70 years old. She just lost her husband to cancer. But more importantly, she lives, you know, with the unsettled grief of her teenaged son's disappearance at sea 30 years ago. And because of that, she's really stoic. She's emotionally inscrutable, as you describe her. And yet she seems open to Marcellus, in part because maybe she sees his sadness. Are there interesting facts here? Yes.. there are. But the way that many scientific "facts" are presented makes me uncomfortable. It is not uncommon to read statements along the lines of "This experiment didn't work, but here is my assumption why" or "We don't have the data or observations to support this claim, but it's probably true." If you're going to present yourself as a scientific authority on a topic, just leave the speculation at home. It's unnecessary and weakens the trust in the authors. The whole ink thing is insane. Some can squirt out ink with such control, they can make a cloud that hides escape, or retains shape enough that it looks like a solid octopus. They can squirt out a couple of those, then change their skin color to match and all of sudden, a predator is faced with a bunch of inky duplicates hanging in the water that may or may not be the real deal. And some, down in the depths where light can’t reach and ink is meaningless, can squirt out glowing, bioluminescent ink! FLORIDO: A lot of Tova's grief comes from not knowing what happened to her 18-year-old son. Marcellus finds a way to sort of help her through that. Indeed with their big eyes, curious nature and famously moody characters – one recent study found they deliberately throw rubbish at other octopuses – the creatures can seem strangely human.An octopus personality test has been developed which is so well respected it is cited by cognitive neuroscientists and the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness and signed by many, including Stephen Hawking. One female successfully mated with the same male 12 times. On the 13th attempt, she ate him. (Octopus birth control?) VAN PELT: But it couldn't have been anything else at that time. I mean, it just - writing it during, you know, 2020, it had to be a happy story. They do it all by using tiny muscles in the skin that control chromatophores, which are cells that function basically like little bags of pigment, and they can either spread those little bags out, so all the pigment is visible, or allow the bags tohang closed, so that what’s under those chromatophores can actually be seen,” says Scheel, adding that under the chromatophores are layers of skin that can reflect or diffuse light, aiding the creature’s camouflage. So, returning to my opening question, if we weep, it is perhaps not from grief over the octopus as much as grief over the unfathomable mystery of life for all of us.