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Making Friends with Octopuses
Update: 2024-09-30
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Octopuses are unique, intelligent creatures with mind-boggling abilities like shape-shifting and camouflage. But for Sy Montgomery, the most interesting thing about octopuses are their fun personalities and the friendships she's developed with them.
Guest: Sy Montgomery, naturalist and author
Guest: Sy Montgomery, naturalist and author
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Transcript
00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:00:02
Constant Wonder Kids is a Constant Wonder Podcast.
00:00:06
Hi, Wonder Kids.
00:00:07
It's Paige.
00:00:09
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to meet an alien?
00:00:13
Imagine stepping off a rocket ship onto a distant unknown planet to meet a new alien species?
00:00:19
What would you do?
00:00:21
I would want to tell them all about Earth and learn about their planet.
00:00:25
But what if we couldn't talk to each other?
00:00:28
What if they looked so different from me that I couldn't even figure out where their mouth was?
00:00:33
Let alone what they were saying.
00:00:36
That would make befriending an alien kind of tricky.
00:00:39
You might think that meeting an alien is just something interesting to imagine.
00:00:43
But today's guest says something different.
00:00:46
I think meeting an octopus is as close as you can come outside of space travel or science fiction to meeting an alien and that's part of what makes it so transforming to have a friend like that.
00:01:03
This is Simon Gummery.
00:01:05
She likes to get to know animals and write books about them.
00:01:09
For one of her books, size spent several years befriending octopuses, which was especially interesting because octopuses are so different from us humans.
00:01:19
They seem more like aliens.
00:01:21
They're all body is different.
00:01:23
I mean, we go head body limbs, and they go body head limbs.
00:01:28
The part that we think of is the octopus's head.
00:01:31
And children's drawings have like a smiley mouth and eyes on it.
00:01:35
That's not even their head.
00:01:36
That's essentially their thorax or their chest or their abdomen.
00:01:41
Their brain is wrapped around their throat in a ring with-- it doesn't even look like a brain or a brain that we know.
00:01:49
I think that it sounds kind of tricky to befriend an octopus.
00:01:53
But size says that a natural and wonderful friendship was able to blossom between her and several of the eight-legged creatures, despite their differences.
00:02:02
One of the most moving incidents that I witnessed was my very first encounter with an octopus.
00:02:08
I wanted to meet an octopus.
00:02:11
I wanted to look in the eyes of an octopus and see if there could be a meeting of the minds.
00:02:17
And so I had asked, could I go behind the scenes at the New England Aquarium?
00:02:21
And when the Aquarius opened up the lid to the tank, all octopus tanks have to have a lid, because otherwise they will get out and they will do stuff.
00:02:31
They'll get into other animals' tanks and eat them and slither throughout your exhibits anyway.
00:02:37
So he opened up the tank.
00:02:40
And I saw this creature turn bright red with excitement.
00:02:45
Her eyes wivelled in its socket locked onto my face.
00:02:49
And she came over to meet me.
00:02:51
She slid from her lair specifically to come and meet me.
00:02:55
And I saw her arms with their white suckers bubbling up from the depths of the tank, reaching toward me.
00:03:04
And of course, I asked if it was OK, may I touch her?
00:03:07
But my impulse immediately was to plunge my hands and arms into the tank and reach out to her just like she was reaching out to me.
00:03:17
And after I've been stroking her head for a long time, she turned white beneath my touch.
00:03:23
And I later discovered that white is the color of a relaxed octopus.
00:03:31
Size first meeting with Athena the Octopus made it clear that not only can humans and octopuses form connections, but they can become friends.
00:03:40
Size also learned about some of the traits that make octopuses special.
00:03:48
They're octopus superpowers.
00:03:48
They can change shape and they can change color.
00:03:53
They cannot just change from red to blue.
00:03:57
But they can match their background exactly.
00:04:02
They can form different patterns on their skin.
00:04:06
And they can choose not just to blend in with their background, but if they want to, they can look like some other thing.
00:04:15
So they can become invisible or they can turn into a poisonous flatfish or a bunch of sea snakes or some other thing.
00:04:25
Depending on what the predator that's chasing them needs to believe or what they want to perpetrate upon their own prey.
00:04:35
So when an octopus is being chased by a predator, they can transform their bodies into something that the predator wouldn't want, like a poisonous fish or piece of coral.
00:04:45
That's amazing.
00:04:47
And when they're looking for something to eat, octopuses can disguise themselves as rocks until a little crab scurries in front of them.
00:04:54
The crab doesn't even recognize the octopus until it's too late.
00:04:59
The octopus's ability to turn into different elements of their environment, depending on what's going on, shows how intelligent they are.
00:05:06
But the octopuses' intelligence can sometimes prove to be a problem when they're living in aquariums.
00:05:13
The thing about octopuses is they're so intelligent that they will get bored.
00:05:20
And anyone who's ever been bored knows how annoying that is.
00:05:25
And you don't want to have a smart creature being bored.
00:05:29
And so my dear friend, Wilson Manashi, who was a volunteer at the aquarium for a long, long time, he and a friend of his, who was also volunteer, kind of got the idea that this animal's bored,
00:05:41
let's do something fun with them.
00:05:44
And he started to play with the octopuses.
00:05:47
And they liked it.
00:05:49
And Wilson liked it.
00:05:51
And now every octopus has a whole series of toys to play with in most aquariums.
00:06:02
There's even a manual on how to keep your octopus occupied.
00:06:10
They love to play with toys like Mr.
00:06:12
Potato Head.
00:06:13
They love to play with Legos.
00:06:15
The same kind of toys our children like to play with.
00:06:17
They love taking things apart.
00:06:19
And they will sometimes put them back together.
00:06:22
And just like a person, they've got to have something interesting to do all day.
00:06:27
Play is one of those things that is pretty easy to recognize, because it resembles exactly what we do.
00:06:34
At the Seattle Aquarium, there was an octopus that basically was bouncing a basketball.
00:06:42
She didn't have a ball, but what she was using was a floating kill container.
00:06:47
And she was using her siphon to jet it into the water that was circulating in her aquarium so that it would loop around and come back to her.
00:06:58
It was just like bouncing a basketball against the wall when you're playing.
00:07:03
And you can feel when somebody is having a good time and you can feel when somebody is happy.
00:07:11
Watching the octopus's play helps sigh and other researchers understand and identify the octopus personalities.
00:07:19
Turns out each octopus has a distinct nature, just like humans.
00:07:24
And at the Seattle Aquarium, there was one octopus.
00:07:27
It was so shy, they named her Emily Dickinson, because he never came out from the back of the filter.
00:07:35
Emily Dickinson was a famous author who didn't like to leave her room.
00:07:40
I bet she never thought she'd have an octopus named after her.
00:07:44
And then there was another one they named Lucretia McEvil, because she loved to dismantle everything in her tank.
00:07:50
And you'd come in in the morning to the aquarium and look at her exhibit and it was just a mess.
00:07:56
And you had to redo the whole thing.
00:07:58
And she'd be fine all day, and then you'd come in the next day and in the night she just dismantled everything.
00:08:03
They are really, really distinctive animals.
00:08:07
And they have different feelings about different people, too.
00:08:10
Some people they like right away.
00:08:13
Other people, they, for some reason, dislike.
00:08:17
And they show their liking and disliking in different ways.
00:08:21
But those people that they dislike, they move away from, obviously.
00:08:25
And sometimes, when they dislike you, they'll shoot you in the face with water.
00:08:30
Other times, they'll shoot you in the face with water to play with you, just like a little boy might in a swimming pool splash you with water when he wants to play.
00:08:41
Over the years, Si was able to be a friend many octopuses.
00:08:45
But one special octopus named Octavia became her favorite friend.
00:08:50
With the octopuses that I knew, when I'd been away for a while, what was very striking was,
00:09:00
we were so eager to be together again.
00:09:04
One time I was away for, I forget what it was.
00:09:06
It was a book tour or something like that.
00:09:09
But I'd been away for several weeks.
00:09:10
I used to come in every week.
00:09:12
And when I got together with Octavia, we'd just flow into each other's arms and just held on to each other.
00:09:20
It was so strikingly like meeting your husband at the airport when you've become, we just could not wait to be together.
00:09:31
And if I could have been reading a bubble above her head, with every touch, she was saying, oh, it's you,
00:09:41
it's you, it's you.
00:09:43
This stuff is so familiar from mammals, who I know.
00:09:49
And there it was in an octopus.
00:09:52
Size relationship with Octavia was very special.
00:09:55
And when Octavia became old and sick, size was sad to see her come to the end of her life.
00:10:02
Octavia had just laid her eggs.
00:10:04
And unfortunately, octopuses die after they laid their eggs.
00:10:10
We had some pretty dramatic events happen at the aquarium.
00:10:15
And one of them was when Octavia laid eggs and what happened at the very end of her life after she had laid her eggs and was about to die.
00:10:28
I came in to say my gobyes.
00:10:31
And I really wondered if she would remember me.
00:10:35
Because remember, they only lived three to five years.
00:10:39
And although I had seen her every week, once a week, she hadn't looked up at me for ten months.
00:10:48
And to an octopus, that's like not seeing someone for decades.
00:10:53
And I wondered if she would one remember.
00:10:57
And two, if she would even care.
00:11:00
When I went in, we took the lid off the tank.
00:11:05
And she looked up at us and she rose a few inches.
00:11:12
And then hundreds of her suckers broke the surface.
00:11:15
And she reached for us.
00:11:18
And she tasted us.
00:11:20
And she looked into our eyes.
00:11:22
And I can't know what was in her heart, or three hearts, octopuses have three hearts.
00:11:28
But I do know that she went to a great deal of effort to see me and touch me and taste me one last time.
00:11:40
And that is something that has stayed with me as a blessing for the rest of my life.
00:11:48
Sye was so happy that she was able to say goodbye to Octavia.
00:11:52
And so grateful for all the memories they had together over the years.
00:11:57
After befriending many octopuses at the aquarium, Sye wondered if she could make an octopus friend in the wild.
00:12:05
I learned to scuba dive in order to meet octopuses in the wild.
00:12:09
So I can thank my captive friends for my learning finally in my late '50s to learn how to scuba dive.
00:12:18
The animals who I met in the wild were different species of octopuses.
00:12:23
Each one had a distinctive personality in the wild.
00:12:29
I went to French Polynesia.
00:12:32
We were trying to find and observe octopuses in the wild, and it was extremely hard to find them in the first place.
00:12:42
And most of the time, the octopuses were hiding.
00:12:45
And day after day after day, first we weren't finding them at all.
00:12:49
And then when you'd see them, all you'd see was some suckers under a rock.
00:12:53
And I was thinking like, gee, this is not going to be all that entertaining for me.
00:13:00
But then, one of our last days, I had this amazing experience.
00:13:06
There were two octopuses who were out and about.
00:13:09
And one of them-- this is a Pacific day octopus, also known as the big blue octopus-- essentially decided to show us around the place.
00:13:23
And let us follow her.
00:13:25
We knew it was a female, because you can tell by looking at a third right on.
00:13:30
Let us follow her around.
00:13:33
And she even reached out and touched me.
00:13:37
And I was astonished, because all the other ones I'd met had been so shy, but she was exceptionally bold.
00:13:45
Many divers spend their entire diving career without ever seeing an octopus.
00:13:50
And why?
00:13:50
Because they change color and shape, and they can pour their boneless bodies down a tiny hole.
00:13:55
So you don't see them.
00:13:57
But if you encounter a bold octopus, they will sometimes.
00:14:03
It seems like they're intentionally showing you around the place.
00:14:08
And I've even heard of octopuses that will take a diver by the hand and lead them.
00:14:15
It's the most amazing thing.
00:14:18
Simon makes me think that befriending an octopus is just like becoming friends with the human.
00:14:23
You find someone with a personality you like, and then you build off things that you like to do together.
00:14:29
Octopuses do share interests with human.
00:14:34
And that is that we both like to play.
00:14:38
And so that's what I and other people who prefernded octopuses had to offer to the octopus something interesting to do.
00:14:49
So it's kind of the same thing about why you hang out with the friends that you hang out with you of a shared interest.
00:14:55
Size friendships with octopuses have filled her life with wonder.
00:14:59
When you step into an octopus's world, you learn about things that you never thought were possible, like shapeshifting or having three hearts.
00:15:07
I think octopuses sound like great friends because we could have fun together and really get to know one another.
00:15:13
So who knows?
00:15:15
Maybe I need to stop by my local aquarium and introduce myself.
00:15:18
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:15:22
A friend who's someone who likes to play and knows you face at the end of the day.
00:15:30
So even if they're different from you and me making octopus friend in the deep blue sea.
00:15:37
A quick word for you, parents.
00:15:45
This is Marcus Smith.
00:15:46
I'm the host of the Constant Wonder Podcast, which is the source of material for Constant Wonder Kids.
00:15:53
We made this episode because Constant Wonder contains a lot of great stuff.
00:15:57
Kids will love, too.
00:15:59
But you may be wanting more.
00:16:02
We've got a whole episode devoted to Simon Gummary and her octopus friends.
00:16:07
If you want to hear the full presentation, go find Constant Wonder, wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:12
It's called the Soul of an Octopus, season one, episode one.
00:16:17
We actually think that you'll love more than just one episode of our podcast, which is an ongoing quest to find awe and wonder in all nature, human or wild,
00:16:28
vast or small, the kinds of encounters that move us beyond words.
00:16:33
Remember when you had time for wonder?
00:16:36
Will we think you still do?
00:16:38
Subscribe to Constant Wonder on your favorite platform.
00:16:42
Constant Wonder Kids was produced by Paige Cremperman Darington with sound designed by Mitchell Towsley.
00:16:49
Constant Wonder Kids is a production of BYU Radio.
00:16:52
(gentle music)
00:16:55