Inside the mind of the octopus by Sy Montgomery ON AN
UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from
New Hampshire to the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England
Aquarium, hoping to touch an alternate reality. I came to meet
Athena, the aquarium’s forty-pound, five-foot-long, two-and-a-
half-year-old giant Pacific octopus. For me, it was a momentous
occasion. I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so
startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to
one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long,
could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the
size of an orange; an animal whose eight arms are covered with
thousands of suckers that taste as well as feel; a mollusk with
a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered
with teeth; a creature who can shape-shift, change color, and
squirt ink. But most intriguing of all, recent research
indicates that octopuses are remarkably intelligent. Many times
I have stood mesmerized by an aquariu