What is Reddit's opinion of The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness?

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Having read "The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness" I will never eat octopus. And am glad I never have. Now the mere sight of a dish of octopus makes me feel ill.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Octopus-Surprising-Exploration-Consciousness/dp/1451697724

I think the octopus is the most remarkable animal on the planet. They're the size of a grain of rice when they're born. They receive no parental instruction. They have to learn everything on their own. They have a short lifespan with most species only living one to two years.

And they develop this incredible intelligence. Their abilities at problem solving and mimicry are legendary.

Sea stars have no eyes, face or brain, but in Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery describes how a sea star would try to take a toy away from an octopus whenever the octopus got a new one. If a staff member moved the toy away from the sea star, it would hurry to retrieve it. Pretty amazing for a creature without a brain.

I recommend Sy Montgomery’s book The Soul of an Octopus. Cool, complex creatures

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, by Sy Montgomery

There is an awesome book called The Soul of An Octopus that talks a lot about this subject. If you are interested in Octopuses at all you should check it out.

If you are curious about their brains, you should check out Soul of the Octopus! It is a great book, and was nominated for the national book award for nonfiction a couple years ago.

The author also wrote a shorter article that formed the basis for the book.

> Octopuses have the largest brains of any invertebrate. Athena’s is the size of a walnut — as big as the brain of the famous African gray parrot, Alex, who learned to use more than one hundred spoken words meaningfully. That’s proportionally bigger than the brains of most of the largest dinosaurs.

> Another measure of intelligence: you can count neurons. The common octopus has about 130 million of them in its brain. A human has 100 billion. But this is where things get weird. Three-fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain; they’re in its arms.

> “It is as if each arm has a mind of its own,” says Peter Godfrey-Smith, a diver, professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an admirer of octopuses. For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it — and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body.

I read The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness last winter. Love them buggers!

I'm reading this book you'd probably enjoy

Check out the book, Soul of an octopus for anyone that wants a similar experience with a bit more of a personal relationship with the Octopus.

Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus, inhabits the intertidal zone but probably doesn't range this far north. The Nova Scotia Museum has a publication, Squids and Octopuses of Nova Scotia and common octopus is not listed. Bathypolypus arcticus is in our waters, but it a deep-water species.

I just moved to Nova Scotia and lived in Bermuda immediately prior to that. In Bermuda, we had a salt water aquarium that we stocked with stuff we caught tidepooling in local waters. The kids really enjoyed the experience and it taught them a great deal about the oceans and coral reefs. They are are both passionate environmentalists now. Most of our tank inhabitants were short-term visitors; we'd keep them for a week or so and study them before returning them to the wild. We kept an octopus, named Octavius, over the Christmas holidays, a period of 4 or 5 weeks. Fascinating creatures.

If you haven't read the book, you really should read Soul of an Octopus.

Here is a video of our friend Octavius the Octopus

Equally as cute are the puffer fish

My decorator crab was hilarious. Here he is dressing up.

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451697724/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xA0JFb2MSK63X

Also recommend “The Soul of an Octopus.” The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451697724/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_a_VRDHWR143PSDVT84P9JM

You all might enjoy this book

The Soul of an Octopus is a great audiobook, for anyone looking for a summer read/listen

It's mine too :) You'll enjoy this read!

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Octopus-Surprising-Exploration-Consciousness/dp/1451697724

Surprisingly awesome book on them. Absolutely fascinating what they can do physically and how intelligent they are.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Octopus-Surprising-Exploration-Consciousness/dp/1451697724