![]() It also has three hearts and is literally mind-bending as its brain is found around its throat. Their blood is actually blue, as it uses copper to carry oxygen, whereas we use iron. They can taste with their entire bodies, but their suckers are especially powerful and attuned to chemicals. Each individual sucker can work like our finger and opposable thumb, allowing it to pinch and grab things. One of these creatures can have 1,600 suckers, each of which can lift 30 pounds. Most of the book focuses on the giant Pacific octopus. Octopuses (not octopi) are fascinating enough to fill a whole book. And it is also a memoir, as Montgomery is very much a part of the story-it follows her relations with fellow enthusiasts, her struggles with scuba diving, and her own emotional connection to the creatures. It is part grab-bag of interesting factoids about this incredible species. It is in part an attempt to grapple with animal consciousness as it relates to the octopus. ![]() In her attempts to understand the octopus, a creature that for a variety of reasons has caught her eye, Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig, befriends the men and women of the New England Aquarium, and while there she develops what can only be called a relationship with its various octopus inhabitants. These leggy cephalopods, long a prominent player in human fear of the ocean depths, are the subject of a touching yet informative new book by Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness. What has eight legs and just might have a soul? ![]()
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