How the human perspective impairs our ability to actually see the octopus

PART 1: The Octopus: Monster in our minds

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let’s imagine a scene. You’re living another life. Your time is deep into our past as a species and a blink of an eye in geologic time. You see the sun rise, engulfing a rocky coastline as golden rays ignite seaspray. You hear the gentle roar of water colliding with land in a soothing metronomic surge. 

Places like this are confusing to you as an air-breathing land-dweller. They are hostile to life, battered by tides and sun, flooding with violence and inexcusable force that makes exploration a life-and-death matter. The contradiction of the puzzle surrounds you: life is tucked into every nook and cranny you see. Creatures of astounding variety cling to and crawl about the salt-battered crags. Today, you’re the first person to explore the seashore – like, ever. 

Carefully, you navigate a slippery path across loose footings and sharp, unforgiving rock. Surveying the rewards this risk brings the abundance of life here, means abundance of food for you and your people. With caution, you crouch down to investigate what bounty is to be had in these tidepools. Emerald grasses shimmer, half submerged in a landscape mottled with red, orange, brown, purple, and black. Small fish dart away from your shadow, seeking desperate refuge in intertidal pockets. Armies of crabs scurry below like ants, some battling each other, others scavenging the corpses of unfamiliar animals unable to escape the danger of the tidal blast zone. Thick orange stars grip rock crevices, their meaty limbs enticing your hungry belly, even as you question if it's safe to eat. 

A large splash, on your right, startles you. The immobile star you’ve been eyeing up can wait. You head toward a large tidepool, still rippling in the morning sun from the source of the disturbance. Despite the pool’s considerable size, open slopes and smoothed rim offer few hideaways, save for a corner at the deeper end shaded by a convenient rock outcrop. It's there, in the kindness of the shade you see the most curious thing. Overcome by the impulse to know, you wade into the knee-deep pool with all apprehension for safety abandoned. Bending down with slow intention to the water’s surface, you gaze through glare and see two, unmistakable, knowing eyes locked onto yours. For a flash, you feel the powerful connection to something, someone, else until it is extinguished by a jet of water sprayed squarely between your eyes. 

Stunned and bemused by the attack, curiosity overtakes your hunger. The water you’re standing in is now jet black. The eyes, attached to a slimy and amorphous blob watch you as the creature slithers over land. It doesn’t move like a snake though, rather, it crawls with many arms gripping onto the rock, their underbelly spotted with rings. It is walking away from you, moving toward the sound of the waves, probing on all sides with its arms – how many arms does it even have? – to find a path of escape. 

You give a slow and quizzical pursuit, exhaling in astonishment when the armed blob propels itself into another pool close to the ocean’s edge, one with a depth you don’t care to discover. Its meticulous ambulatory locomotion over land dissolves in absolute grace and agility once submerged, safe again, below the water. 

Those eyes lock onto you again while its head undulates and grows wide, flashing harsh red and oranges through skin once smooth, now dimpled and horned. The small blob completes an impossible expansion, outstretching eight menacing arms. As fast as the animal sprayed you in the face, it tucks all its arms together, narrows its head and disappears in the blink of an eye like a bird diving from the heavens. 

Congratulations. You’re also the first human in history to meet an octopus. And you have a problem: how the hell do you even describe what you’ve just witnessed and experienced to anybody else?

Returning to the present you, me, and the first human ambassador to greet the cephalopod delegation of Earth, are connected by more than our DNA. We all share the collective challenge humans, as a sentient species who fancies themselves quite intelligent, face when trying to comprehend the world around us. In particular, we struggle to know and understand the true nature of an animal as compelling as the octopus. As is our tradition, when people struggle to understand what they see we make up a tale that makes the most sense. Time and time again, those myths always prove laughably wrong.

IT’S NOT A PHASE, WE’RE OCTOCURIOUS

All the monumental breakthroughs of science and advances in technology across centuries have yet to bridge the chasm between our perception and that of our cousins on the tree of life. That hasn’t stopped us from trying, after all, attention and curiosity are among our greatest superpowers. The self-centered beings we can be, we investigate those which we find similar, like great apes. Or those who find it beautiful (and maybe envy because they can fly), like birds. Or those that inspire an awe of familiarity like cetaceans. Few other species, though, activate the curiosity innate in us like the octopus.

Octopus-mania has gripped us longer than we’ve had in written history. Show me a culture that lived near the coast or navigated the ancient sea and inevitably the octopus will appear as a not-insignificant figure in its folklore. Their eight arms have slithered into our hearts and minds and wrapped tightly around our imaginations for millennia. 

In Hawaiian tradition, the octopus holds a revered status as a wise and ancient being, who is connected to ancestors and the creation of the world. Folklore in Fiji describes a giant octopus who is a guardian of the sea and that protects the harmony between humans and nature. In Japan, the sometimes benevolent giant octopus monster Akkorokamui is feared and worshiped, with offerings made in the hope he will bestow healing upon the faithful. Tlingit peoples, living in what is now Alaska, tell a centuries-old account of a battle between their ancestors and a malevolent octopus that was sinking their canoes. 

Not to be outdone, in the 17th century the tale of the Kraken, a gigantic and terrifying octopus that sank whole ships off the coast of Norway, instilled fear in sailors and artistically manifested in the marginalia of cartographers. Then there are the ancient Greeks, who loved them some octopus. They immortalized them in art, on coins, and infused traits of the octopus into their mythology in characters like the hydra and Medusa.

“But Kevin,” you say shouting with raised fists, “If we weren’t meant to rule over and pave nature into an endless sea of concrete strip malls and McMansions, then why are we so good at paving nature into an endless sea of concrete strip malls and McMansions?”

To which I would say: “Sit down, have a juice box, you’re causing a scene.” And then I’d finish my point about awareness. 

We are aware of our capabilities to mold the world to our needs, and the role of relative dominance we occupy as a result. Though aware of that power, we neglect our curiosity. We then default to making sense of the world only through our limited perspective. That cultivates hubris manifested as general unawareness toward the morality of our unchecked exploitation of the land and sea.

That arrogance is not new! It’s been around for a long time, distorting how we experience and perceive these cephalopods all the way back to Aristotle. Yeah, THAT Aristotle.

Building up to his diagnosis of “just plain dumb” in the ninth and final book of the volume, Aristotle made a number of, what modern science has since backed up, accurate observations about octopus behavior and biology. He documented: the dexterity of their bodies and arms; the motherly dedication to caring for their eggs; their ink self-defense system; cunning hunting prowess; land walking; and how octopuses mate. To his credit, he provided the first description of the male octopus’ penis ‘tentacle’ (more precisely, a penis arm) colored with the appropriate incredulous tone that must be applied to any story from a fisherman.

Sending mixed signals after the world’s first octo-negging, he goes on to compliment them as “neat and thrifty” for the manner in which they build and keep their dens. He also describes their ability to change color to blend into their surroundings when they hunt. 

When he wrote this, Aristotle possessed the most octopus knowledge of any person on the planet. Processing the totality of all those observations, when challenged to write of a mind-blowing interaction with another species that demonstrates an intelligence and curiosity beyond our own, Aristotle jumps to, literally, a stupid conclusion. 

The not-so-subtle motivational subtext is that the philosopher perceived this behavior as ‘stupid’ because the owner of the hand in which this hypothetical octopus approached most likely intended to eat the damn thing. I picture him now quietly uttering to himself, “This dope thinks we’re friends.”

The assumption places humans as supreme with dominion over all life. It’s a misconception that Aristotle, and countless others adopt, when they close their minds during an experience with non-human intelligence. Rather than welcoming the beautiful connection of these rare moments, he frames our 8-armed friends as less-than. 

Roman scholars following in Aristotle’s sandaled footsteps didn’t do better when they wrote multiple absurd accounts of voracious, land octopuses walking on land. In the 2nd century CE text Halieutica (4.264), author Oppian whimsically portrayed the octopus’ love for olives to be so strong that they climb olive trees to eat the fruit and could be caught by fishermen who drag olive branches behind their boats. Others, however, colored the land octopus (yes, it is more ridiculous to type than it is for you to read) in a hue of extreme violence.

Remember the urban legends about alligators in the sewers? Both Pliny and Aelian deserve some credit for building that myth, except in theirs, the gator is an octopus. 

In Pliny’s Natural History (book 9, chapter 46-48), after plagiaristically re-upping Aristotelian octopi libel, he rewards us with some choice first century gas-lighting wherein he illustrates how one particular octopus executes an ambush attack on a shellfish (think clam) by covertly sticking a pebble between the bivalve’s armor, propping the shells open for easier consumption. Wow, that’s some clever tool use! What’s your analysis Pliny: “So great is the instinctive shrewdness in animals that are otherwise quite remarkable for their lumpish stupidity.”

He makes clear his full opinion of the octopus: “there is not an animal in existence, that is more dangerous for its powers of destroying a human being.” To reinforce his point, he spins a tale of a massive 700-pound ornery octopus that lurked in the sewers waiting to steal pickled fish from street vendors. The “monster” climbed over fences, up a tree, fought off dogs and was only subdued with freaking tridents!? Yes, tridents.

Aelian, a century after Pliny, recounted a similar legend that reinforced the monstrous size and nature of the octopus in his On the Characteristics of Animals. He claimed they could grow as large as whales, which for an octopus is fanciful but for their squid cousins, a reality. The existence of those rarely seen leviathans gave credence to legends of monsters lurking at the edge of the map, as we built bigger ships that made our unknown world smaller and smaller.

DARK MONSTERS IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Centuries later, the confusion and wild exaggeration of seafarers that may have witnessed a real giant squid collided with the blossoming field of zoology. As word of the Kraken spread in the late 18th century, Carl Linneaus, the person responsible for creating the way species are classified, included the Kraken in several of his works, calling it “singulare monstrum”, a unique monster. French Naturalist Pierre Denys de Montfort provided a description of the giant boat-killer in the Historie Naturalle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques and illustrated the iconic drawing of a gargantuan beast.

The book features a fantastical scene where the protagonist engages in life-or-death battle with a ferocious octopus. Hugo, perhaps taking too personally an incident where a (curious, maybe territorial) octopus swam after his son, went scorched Earth. He transformed the octopus into a horrible face-hugging, actual-blood-sucking, pneumatic death machine. Eliminating any doubt of his opinion, Hugo took the opportunity to call them among the most “concrete forms of evil.” The account was so wild and ridiculous, that British zoologist Henry Lee wrote an entire book setting the record straight and debunking Hugo’s horrific octopus. It’s worth noting, though, that even in defense of the mollusc, the author still called them devil fish.

The same year Hugo poured a big tub of haterade on the octopus everywhere, Jules Verne penned Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea where the crew of a futuristic submarine must fend off an attack by a school of giant squid. Though real and not an octopus, the nuance of that distinction is easily lost by an average reader of the day, especially when Verne liberally applied the nickname the devilfish throughout the book. Carrying the baton of octopi malignancy into the 20th century were H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft who each cast octopus-like creatures as antagonists in their signature works.

Art necessarily reflects the world artists inhabit. When the perceptions of a mysterious animal are distorted by centuries of bias, assumptions, fears, or insecurities of the people who described it, what else might we expect from creatives but a parade of octopus monsters?

How to behold an octopus

WHAT WE’VE (FINALLY) LEARNED

The incomplete picture – painted by the free divers, fishermen, tide-pool foragers, philosophers, and trailblazers of science – was given a detailed resolution in the 20th century because of the invention of scuba diving and massive advances in laboratory science. Examining their behavior in their natural habitat, and diving into the depths of the genetic building blocks of what makes an octopus rapidly closed some wide, long-held gaps of knowledge. 

Let’s start with some basics: Octopus are molluscs, which are related to snails, slugs, mussels, clams, and oysters. They are cephalopods, which has Greek origins and means “head-feet”. That's what they – and their cousins the cuttlefish, nautilus and squid – basically are: a head and some feet. Except we call an octopus’ feet arms, not tentacles. Octopus do not have tentacles, but the other cephalopods do. They are bilaterally symmetrical, which means that they appear broadly symmetrical on both sides of an imaginary plane drawn down through their middle. There are over 300 species of octopus swimming through all parts of our ocean, occupying important roles as both predator and prey. Many varieties are considered to be keystone species that provide balance to the complex ocean food web. 

Science doesn’t end with the basics, though. There is always another question to ask. Another observation to make, another insight to render. Focused, continual study transformed the octopus into a highly intelligent creature.

Though there’s been a strong impulse to make aliens in the shape of octopus for a while, this punctuated fervor of octo-alien madness was kicked off because of yet another amazing breakthrough in our knowledge: researchers sequenced the octopus genome, learning they had more complicated genetics than other invertebrates and possessed genes thought only found in vertebrates. One of those researchers, in the excitement of the accomplishment, was quoted in a blog about the study where he subquoted a deceased zoologist who had at one time called octopuses aliens. 

If you’re keeping score: a quote, within a quote, within a blog post announcing a great discovery, conveyed a sliver literalism upon a metaphor, which was spun into a clickbait frenzy by dubious UK tabloid networks, who blasted it through our screens triggering a collectively long-held suspicion that octopus are not of this world, and offering science denial fodder to the anti-evolution crowd. It's almost as tangled as a cross-eyed octo– nope, nevermind. That’s too far, even for me. 

The thing about science is, it's never finished and therefore cannot be absolute. We can always learn another thing, and another thing, and it's a test of our curiosity to keep going without a final destination in mind. It was 2015 when the study on the octopus genome was published, and it left lingering the question: how did the octopus get such a rare set of genes? The RNA discoveries, published in 2023, shed light on that, while also leaving more mysteries to solve. That 8-year lag of uncertainty is not unusual in academic study, and it's also enough for our imaginations to run wild. 

And wild we ran! A whole other set of scientists published a theoretical article in which they theorized that the evolution of octopus genes was due to alien genetic material crashing to Earth. While NBC credulously reported it, other peers weighed in on the evidence-lite speculation that it “cannot be taken seriously.”

Why does this keep happening though? Gods? Monsters? Aliens? Why does the octopus need to be anything other than our amazing shapeshifting, three-hearted earthly kin?

There is a clear and superficial argument based on literally everything about how they look. Big bulbous heads. Dark, bulging, and knowing eyes. No ears or nose, and a relatively small mouth. Perfectly fits the description of a grey alien until you get to the eight sucker-dappled arms, which doesn't exactly kill the case. Their intelligence, shapeshifting, and mobility in the sea and on land are wonderful qualities for any terrifying otherworldly antagonist from a 1950s B-movie.

At a fundamental level, the inherent traits and behaviors of octopuses blur boundaries. That’s tough on our category-forward minds. Perhaps too, witnessing the scope of their incredible talents we begin to judge ourselves against them. An easier choice is to place them in a class from a different world. It’s a boost to our collective ego to disqualify one of our rivals for top talent on Earth. 

We could fear the octopus for many reasons. We fear that it's a master of an environment that is so hostile to us. The ocean is legit scary. We fear how different they look from us and the imaginary shadows their appearance inspires. And, we fear it because we might believe octopus are intelligent and adaptable in a way we only thought ourselves.

Similarities reflected back toward us from such a different being are jarring. It feels… alien. For the self-appointed phylogenetic arborists, lopping octopus off the family tree is the elegant outcome when something different feels so familiar.

No doubt, there are true believers who will remain convinced the octopus is an extraterrestrial. There are also cynics who take that position because it validates their own view about the nature of the world. Given the chance, the media will spin up an alien octopus news cycle at a moment’s notice because of the incentive they have to stir up controversy. 

Despite their volume, the worldview that octopus are actual aliens is a minority opinion. Far more people are genuinely fascinated with octopus. They see these cephalopods as an important part of our ocean ecosystem and shared, though distant, evolutionary history. The most dedicated seek to learn and absorb all they can of these animals. Their predicament is then how can they observe an octopus or octopuses without the tint of the human lens shading toward anthropomorphizing. 

LIMITS OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM

It’s both an unsuspected and welcoming trap in which to fall when we see all the common traits we both share: Bilateral symmetry, big heads, large brains, intelligence, individual personalities, prehensile parts, walking, dedicated motherhood, tool use, play, ganglia, RNA editing, city building. Those attributes tilt us toward our tendency of ascribing human qualities to the things around us. When absorbed by our subconscious mind, we project ourselves on the octopus. 

In 2020, My Octopus Teacher streamed this phenomenon directly into the homes of an, effectively, captive audience thanks to the global pandemic. The heartwarming story of love between a man and a mollusc became a massively impactful piece of pro-octopus propaganda. The film was beautiful, gripping, sad, and inspiring. It was an invitation to learn more about the ocean and its many wonders. And there’s no way to tell that good of a story, of man forming what he described as a friendship with an octopus, without anthropomorphism. 

The lesson the film's human protagonist claims to have learned from the octopus teacher is that life is fragile and we're all connected. That is a fantastic lesson, which I want more people to believe, but did the octopus intend to teach anything? Which of the octopus’ behaviors in the film were driven by an intention that matched the story being told? Those answers are unknowable. 

Given the impossibility of knowing what that, or any, octopus is thinking, the implications of the film’s narrative are misleading. The octopus was living its life, hunting, surviving, being intensely curious, you know, real octopus stuff. The man may have been inspired to learn his own beautiful life lessons, but by crediting an octo-educator for his progress, he brings us all the way back to Aristotle.

Aristotle couldn’t know if an octopus was stupid, but as a human observer he filled in uncertainty with his own story. The great limitation of anthropomorphism is revealed by both instances: it sets human behavior as supreme. Our own experience is held as the standard measure against all else. Oriented like that, we’ll always fail to meet the world on a basic level of existence.

SEE THE OCTOPUS & LOOK BEYOND OURSELVES

If beholding an octopus, a person, any creature or thing on that reciprocal level were easy, you would not have spent your precious time reading my description of this conundrum. It’s challenging because we need to decenter our own self-importance. Then we must release the motivation to know, or control, all and accept mysteries beyond the barrier of our individual minds.

Achieving both allows us to lead with curiosity and respect for what we don’t understand and are unfamiliar. We can experience empathy for the shared qualities and struggles we observe. We’re then open to embrace the fact that, at the end of the day, we’re all in this shit together.

That empathy, so easily confused with anthropomorphism, is powerful because it dissolves the projection of ourselves outward and invites us to consider the ways we are connected to and a part of the world we observe.

We relate to the struggle of an octopus who works hard for a meal. Watching a withering octomom, parents understand the innate instinct to protect their kids. Seeing octopodes in Jervis Bay choose violence toward their neighbors, we can relate to the challenge of dealing with our own kind. If more humans saw them on this fundamental level, they would question why people are so cavalier about how we treat the ocean.

Being curious. Empathizing with octopuses. Appreciating them. Allowing octopus to simply be. Practicing these intentions can override the impulse to rationalize, intellectualize, and tell stories about them through the distorted human filter. Achieving that might bring new feelings to the surface, like concern over the undue pressures and harm people have put upon the octopus’s ocean home. It might even appear perverse that the further from fishing for subsistence people have gotten, the more humanity exerted a lopsided, industrial, extractive, and destructive relationship with the ocean.

That’s part of what we want Octopolis to achieve: reminding people of our connection to mother nature. The audacious 50-foot interactive octopus sculpture, which will go on to support habitat resilience as an artificial reef, is a portal to inspire understanding, learning, and gratitude for the ocean world. It's an invitation to appreciate octopuses with open-minds and empathetic hearts, and use our own curiosity to see clearly our own reflection in these cephalopods. 

Bringing that curiosity and that empathy will force us to face something truly fearful: the opportunity to shift our mindset and change behaviors from the reign of dominion to the responsibility of stewardship.

written by Kevin Connor