First of all, giant Pacific octopuses have been living near my home all my life in Seattle, a port city. I have walked and partied on Seattle’s beaches all of my life and ate seafood at restaurants with beachside tables on Seattle’s piers. The Seattle Aquarium has a few octopuses, and some of them are Youtube stars. Secondly, the Aquarium catches them in Elliot Bay, just off the pier where the Aquarium was built. Third, the local diving clubs see them all of the time, posting videos of them, including one video of baby octopuses hatching from eggs, while their dying mother waves them on. The babies are cute as buttons, literally, being the size of tiny pearl collar buttons. Mom octopuses die shortly after the babies begin hatching because the moms starve themselves on guard duty while the eggs grow after being laid. I love animals; fiction and nonfiction stories about various species interest me. But octopuses? Those many tentacled slimy underwater creatures would never have fascinated me enough to read a book devoted to them. It took a book club selection to force me, twist my arm. Ah, the beauty of a book club. I am now a convert, an octopus zealot. Do not engage me in conversation unless you want to be bombarded with endlessly surprising octopus facts. The companion to the highly-anticipated National Geographic television special, this beautifully illustrated book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. Heartache, loss and how friendship can help us get through that kind of pain. They are the themes at the center of a new novel. Its focus is on one particularly endearing friendship between Marcellus and Tova. Marcellus is an octopus who lives in captivity in a small town aquarium on Washington's Puget Sound. Tova is a grieving 70-year-old who works the night shift, cleaning the aquarium. The book is called "Remarkably Bright Creatures." And its author, Shelby Van Pelt, joins us. Welcome, Shelby.

But on the other hand, it was a light and mostly ok read. Nothing new about octopodes * if you have seen a documentary or two about them, but I enjoyed reading about their encounters with the author and the personnel from Boston’s New England Aquarium (that’s where the author conducted this “study”).

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I'm kind of "eh" on this book. It bills itself as a "surprising exploration into the wonder of consciousness," I guess because it shares a few fun facts about octopus neurology (e.g. THEY HAVE NEURONS IN THEIR ARMS!) and references a few philosophers of mind (e.g. Thomas Nagel) in passing. Maybe it's the former philosophy major in me, but IMHO saying "Hmm, I REALLY wonder what it would be like to be an octopus! Can we even know?" does not qualify as an exploration into the wonders of consciousness. (Also, the answer is NO. Very obviously no.) Right away, according to the narrative, Montgomery experiences a sense affection and wonder for the octopus, and she tells us all about the octopuses she gets to know in captivity, and also there is a cast of human characters she gets to know while getting to know the octopuses. So, this book is about a person learning about octopuses, and a person spending time at an aquarium and getting to know other people who work there. Furthermore Montgomery decides to learn to scuba dive because she wants to see octopuses who aren't in captivity. 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.

Plankton may also lessen the atmospheric ozone layer that contributes to global warming and bleaches the coral habitats in which many octopuses live. Clearly, the plankton in the oceans is immeasurably important for our survival. (p.42) At which point Montgomery decides she needs to experience the ocean; would “love to be actually in the real ocean with them.” She wants to be in the very ocean home denied the same octopus she wants to be in the real ocean with. Huh.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.

Even though this is related to squid and not octopuses, some may have a visual language on their skin to share information with fellow squid; in other words, they’re “living books.” Octopuses have their own intelligence that we can’t match,” Wilson said. “And hopefully we’ll learn from our mistakes. That’s the best we can do. After all,” he said, “we’re only human.” The body itself is protean, all possibility’ … an octopus hunting in a lagoon on the island of Mayotte near Madagascar. Photograph: Gabriel Barathieu FLORIDO: Thanks for joining us. Marcellus - he's this octopus, but he's a real curmudgeon stemming from his life in captivity. And yet he's charming. He's really funny. And we should note that he's not a talking octopus to the humans in your book. He's just an octopus in a fish tank. But you take us into his mind. Why?Uh, I was saying...about octopuses? Um, here's something you might be interested in. The plural of octopus isn't octopi because that would be slapping a Latin suffix on a Greek root. The Greek plural would be octopodes. But the writers of the book call them octopuses. Not that we should believe anything they're saying. Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings but beings gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth." But (and you knew this was coming), I don't think aquariums should catch or pay to catch animals from the wild for their exhibits. Even though the people in the book cared about their charges, in reading you could see how the conditions for the animals was sometimes cruel (Kali in particular). Yes, and octopuses are oviparous- they lay eggs. Humans are vivaporous. They find interesting places to lay their eggs, like beer cans and beer bottles. Some species carry their eggs with them - The Argonaut, named after the Greek mythological hero Jason.

FLORIDO: And he's sort of watching these humans outside of the - you know, on the other side of the fish tank, sort of bumbling around. And he's sitting there, scheming. I know accidents and deaths can happen, but it seemed like the aquarium went through its animals relentlessly. Why can't they be enjoyed by scuba divers or in electronic exhibits rather than in person? If these creatures are so intelligent (and I have no doubt they are), why do we abduct them and keep them in a life of captivity?

VAN PELT: You know, Tova gets in her own way there. You know, she's an imperfect character. She does have a group of friends that care about her a lot. But she almost won't let them because she's got this - you know, this kind of shell around her, this stoic nature, this, you know, can-do... 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! Until I read ‘The Soul of an Octopus’, by Sy Montgomery, talented amateur scientist (journalist) octopuses were almost not ever in my thoughts in any way. As I have learned in reading this book, this was a serious deficiency in my education.