It was Octopus Day yesterday so I looked out some footage I took in 2019 of a tropical octopus. What amazing creatures? Did you know, every one of the octopus’s tentacles has an independently-sensing nervous system. A ‘brain’ if you like. This is so different from us that scientists still don’t really know how it works.
There is nothing else like it on Earth … the head seems to follow the eight arms around. It’s not multiple animals but more than consciousness working together. It’s generally accepted that octopus have a high level of sentience. That includes immense intelligence about the environment, the ability to problem-solve and self-awareness. This sophistication helps them be one of the most successful predators in the ocean. It also links them to the ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More they occupy.
Octopus sentience and ecosystems
You might like to read Jackie Higgins’ book Sentient. It is all about animal senses and has a fascinating chapter on octopus. Here I write about how that connects back to ecosystems.
Survival of any animal depends not just on its own behaviour, but the outcomes of all animals working together. That word ‘diversity’ is the key to everything. Diversity across all lifeforms is the secret to a healthy planet. In sensory terms, it’s no different, and the incredible sensory diversity of an octopus makes it supreme … it’s an animal with super powers.
We will never know how an octopus thinks or feels but it helps us to wonder in amazement about this. It’s why we have habitable ecosystems to live in.
‘Each octopus contains some five hundred million communication-processing neurons … Some of these neurons reside in an octopus’s central brain, between its eyes, but two-thirds are found in its semiautonomous arms … Dayton was being embraced by the octopus’s mind.’
Richard Louv writes about someone’s encounter with a 14-foot wide octopus while diving, in the book Our Wild Calling.
As Craig Foster (My Octopus Teacher) says in his book ‘Underwater Wild’, it’s about ‘knowing a small part of wild nature and letting it live inside the soul.’
You can read more about animal sentience, intelligence, culture and how it connects with making a habitable world in my book ‘Wildlife in the Balance’. https://simonmustoe.blog/about-the-book-wildlife-in-the…/
