P.Z. Meyers, at Pharyngula, has posted on why he doesn't own an octopus. His post reminds me of my own experience with the species:
It was years ago. I was on the board of directors for a little non-profit. We were all very young, very idealistic, and none of us were well-off, so we tended to meet in our homes.
In this case, the home belonged to a board member whose husband had a little boat. Another board member had brought some cigars.
This was in a window of about two years between the time that I got over my puritan objections to smoking and the time that I decided it was just too unhealthy.
There were no meetings scheduled for the afternoon, and so four of us, guys, decided to take the cigars, go out on the boat, and try to catch something for dinner.
It was male bonding time. And, although I was an amatuer at smoking, fishing, and male bonding, it really was great.
We headed out of the bay, came to some good fishing waters, and dropped our hooks in. It wasn't long before I felt a tug on mine.
I tugged back, the hook set, and after a little struggle I hauled it in.
It was an octopus—a little thing, about a foot and a half from tentacle tip to tentacle tip.
We stared at each other in amazement. I'm not sure it had ever seen a human up close before.
I was new at this, and so I fumbled around, trying to remove the hook without harming the octopus. Strangely enough, it didn't struggle. It remained perfectly still. I don't know whether it was paralyzed with fear, understood my good intentions, or was merely biding its time.
One of the others handed me a pair of wire cutters, and, with some awkwardness, I finally managed to cut the barb off, and slide the hook out.
The second the hook was free, the octopus slipped out of my hands, scrambled across the deck, climbed over the edge of the boat, and dropped into the sea. It was over in an instant.
I can't eat octopus, or anything remotely like octopus, to this day. There was something about the way it looked at me, something about the way it moved across the deck, which was eerie.
It was both more human, and less human than, say, my cat—an intelligence that bespoke of a soul and was, at the same time, completely alien.
I think, in that moment, I had some inkling of what an encounter with an alien species might actually be like.
If so, I hope, when the time comes, that they have the kindness to remove the hook, and let us scamper over the side—or that we have the good sense not to eat them for dinner.
On the other hand, perhaps not. Perhaps this wasn't a preview of our meeting with an alien species, after all.
Perhaps it was the real thing.
