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Sy Montgomery

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness Paperback – April 5, 2016

by Sy Montgomery (Author)

1,602 ratings

in Invertebrates Zoology

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Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction * New York Times Bestseller * Starred Booklist and Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick * A Huffington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Month on Goodreads * Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year * An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year

“Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors.” —New Statesman, UK

“One of the best science books of the year.” —Science Friday, NPR

Another New York Times bestseller from the author of The Good Good Pig, this “fascinating…touching…informative…entertaining” (Daily Beast) book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans.

In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.

Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.

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Editorial Reviews

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“Enter the mysterious intelligent alien world of the octopus. Experience a real intelligence based on a sense of touch that humans can barely imagine.” -- Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation

"Renowned author Sy Montgomery's latest gem is a must read for those who want to dissolve the human-constructed borders between "them" (other animals) and us. Surely, there are large differences among nonhuman animals and between nonhuman and human animals, but there also are many basic similarities. Connecting with other animals is part of the essential and personal process of rewilding and reconnecting with other animals, and The Soul of an Octopus is just what is needed to close the gap." -- Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional lives of Animals

"Diving deeper than Jules Verne ever dreamed, The Soul of an Octopus is a page-turning adventure that will leave you breathless. Has science ever been this deliciously hallucinatory? Boneless and beautiful, the characters here are not only big-hearted, they're multi-hearted, as well as smart, charming, affectionate...and, of course, ambidextrous. If there is a Mother Nature, her name is Sy Montgomery." -- Vicki Constantine Croke, author of Elephant Company

"In The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery immerses readers into an intriguing, seductive world just beneath the ocean waves and the lives of the creatures living within. In this beautifully written book, she brings empathy, insight, and an enchanting sense of wonderment to the bonds we inherently share with other beings—even those seeming far different from us." -- Vint Virga, DVM, The Soul of All Living Creatures

“A captivating book on an intelligence as ‘alien’ as one from outer space. And its not science fiction.” -- Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind of the Raven

"Can an octopus have a mind and emotions, let alone a soul? Sy Montgomery faces these questions head-on in her engaging new book as she explores the world of octopuses, making friends with several and finding heartbreak when they die. They aren't, she discovers, simply brainless invertebrates, but personable, playful, conscious beings. Montgomery's enthusiasm for animals most of us rarely see is infectious, and readers will come away with a new appreciation for what it means to be an octopus." -- Virginia Morell, author of ANIMAL WISE: How We Know Animals Think and Feel

"With apparent delight, Montgomery puts readers inside the world of these amazing creatures. A fascinating glimpse into an alien consciousness." -- Kirkus Reviews

"The Soul of an Octopus is one of those works that makes you hope we can save the planet if for no other reason than to preserve the wondrous beasts we are fortunate enough to share it with." -- Steve Lysaker, Outward Hounds

"Sy Montgomery’s joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures will have you rethinking that order of calamari.", Library Journal Editors' Spring Pick

"Sweet moments are at the heart of Montgomery's compassionate, wise and tender new book... Only a writer of her talent could make readers care about octopuses as individuals... Joins a growing body of literature that asks us to rethink our connection to nonhumans who may be more like us than we had supposed.", St. Paul Pioneer Press

About the Author

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and author of twenty acclaimed books of nonfiction for adults and children, including the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus and the memoir The Good Good Pig, a New York Times bestseller. The recipient of numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, border collie, and flock of chickens.

Product details

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Atria Books; Reprint edition (April 5, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451697724
ISBN-13: 978-1451697728
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 1,602 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Animal Behavior & Communication
- #1 in Invertebrates Zoology
- #1 in Marine Biology (Books)

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5 star		76%
4 star		13%
3 star		5%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Shelley Isom

How can anyone not be interested in the octopus?

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2016

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I once kept an octopus in a sea water aquarium. For the week that I kept her, she spent all her time watching every move that I made. Every night even though I piled the aquarium with plywood heaped with books and anything heavy, she would crawl out and I would find her on the rug the next morning. Thinking she was dead, I would scrape her into a dustpan and put her back in the aquarium where she would come to life -- unhappily. She had so much impact on me that by the end of the week I knew I had to put her back in the ocean. Her huge consciousness had made me feel small and stupid for trying to keep a creature that could make itself felt that way in a small aquarium. This happened in the '60's but I never forgot her and I have ever since been crazy about octopus (and cuttle fish). We have so consistently underrated the creatures we share the world with that this was a wake up call for me. For awhile, I wanted to be a marine biologist but I knew I wouldn't want to spend my time killing and cutting up living creatures to "scientifically" study them. If rats don't take over, than surely the octopus will once we are gone. Oh, yes, and I LOVED THIS BOOK and the woman who wrote it.

605 people found this helpful

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Barbara Winch

Too Much About YOU

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2017

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I felt the editorial reviews were misleading. They raved about this book. And while I was thrilled with the first half of the book since I was learning about octopuses, I was very positive about this reading experience initially. But then the author got into her scuba diving excursions and her relationships with other divers and I felt rather cheated. I thought the book was about the life style and physiology of the octopus, not about her scuba diving misadventures and relationships with other divers. I wonder if the folks who wrote the editorial reviews actually read her entire book. It was a disappointment to me.

261 people found this helpful

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Michael Nieuwenhuizen

Disappointing.

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2017

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Disappointing. I was hoping to learn more about the lives of octopuses, but instead I most of the story was about someone visiting several octopuses in an aquarium. Not a big fan of keeping animals in captivity - the author even describes how some of the animals must have got really bored - but instead of learning many facts about these amazing creatures, we get loads of little side stories about the personal lives of the other people visiting or working at the aquarium.

I read this book after "What a Fish Knows" which is a brilliant book, very insightful, and maybe I set the bar too high and was expecting something similar.

219 people found this helpful

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D. Thompson

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2018

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I did not find Sy Montgomery to be a good writer. I struggled to finish the book. I agree with the other one star reviews. Considering the amount of time I spent reading this book, I did not learn a lot of new information about the octopus. A lot of the book reads like a diary. I learned more than I wanted to about Sy's friends, hopes,dreams, and body aches. Example: "Marion has been missing for a few weeks from our Wonderful Wednesdays, plagued with headaches. But one week she surprises us with happy news: she's getting married. We've met her brown-haired, bespectacled beau, Dave Lepzelter, a postdoc in biophysics at Boston University, who loves Star Wars, their nine pet rats, and the anacondas. They haven't set the wedding date yet, but they have selected the officiant: Scott, Marion's hero and mentor." If you find that bit of writing as tiresome and mind-numbing as I do, then do not buy this book.

But what disturbed me most about this book, and the reason I gave it one star, is the prevailing misperception that people have the right to keep octopuses captive against their will, deprive them of a natural fulfilling life, even kill them, while the whole time maintaining how much they love the octopus. Here are some examples:

Sy describes Ken Wong as a "shipper" of octopuses. One octopus, later named Karma, tried to jet away from Ken in the ocean, but he caught her in his net. Taken from the ocean, Ken put Karma in a 5x5x4 foot tank. Ken says "I love them all" and has "no regrets" about capturing wild free octopuses and then subjecting them to a risky transport (which could kill some of them) followed by a solitary life in a small prison. He justifies it by saying that the captive octopus will live a "long, good life." How many people would choose to live 100 years in prison instead of 80 years as a free human being? Not me. This attitude of being insensitive to the autonomy of an octopus is pervasive in the book. It reminds me of the elk and duck hunters who loudly proclaim how much they "love" ducks, elk, and nature and then kill, maim, and blast the same animals with gleeful abandon. In one chapter, an octopus named Kali escapes from a tank at the aquarium at night and dies on the floor. The aquarium staff are sad and cry, but they do not seem to own their responsibility for the death of this animal that they stole from the ocean and kept captive. What is worse, these people recognize the intelligence and emotional capacity of the octopus and still keep it prisoner in a small tank that in no way approximates the stimulation and full life that an octopus would experience in its natural environment.

One octopus handler named Andrew was described in this way: "When all the fish in his tank turned up dead, he didn't cry, but instead asked his mom to borrow her scissors so he could dissect the corpses and find out what went wrong." Sy casually comments that "Octopuses who have been experimentally blinded navigate flawlessly using their sense of touch and taste." How about some sense of outrage at this treatment of living feeling animals? Amazingly Sy writes, "I longed to return to the ocean to watch octopuses where their choices would be as limitless as the sea. Come summer, I would have a chance to get my wish." It is too bad that all of the octopuses held captive in aquariums, dead on aquarium floors or in shipping containers, didn't get their wish.

104 people found this helpful

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giki

Octopuses are way cooler and stranger than I had ever imagined

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2017

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A great book if you want to learn loads about octopuses, and let's face it – who wouldn't, octopuses are cool. Actually, they are way cooler and stranger than I had ever imagined. The author weaves her tale about her encounters, not just with octopuses at the New England Aquarium in Boston, but their human carers, with references to scientific papers, classical text, and works of philosophy and psychology. It is a remarkably complete and wide-ranging view of the octopus from just about every angle. And the informal conversational style makes it very readable too. It tries to get as close as t possible to trying to understand the emotional inner life of the octopus without anthropomorphising. I am not sure it entirely succeeds in this, there is plenty sentimentality, especially towards the end. For me, the big elephant in the room, lightly glossed over from time to time, was the whole issue around capturing such an intelligent animal from the wild and keeping it in a fairly barren and unstimulating aquarium (or pickle barrel!!). The octopuses are able to solve puzzles quickly and have complex social interactions with people, most of their time is spent in the unchanging environment of the aquarium. How this might affect them is difficult to say as the way they experience the world is quite different from us, but I felt this topic should have been tackled rather than brushed off.
On the upside I now know for sure what the plural of octopus is and I am never likely to forget

10 people found this helpful

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The Hollywood Hills

Interesting book, could do with more depth

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2018

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This is a well-written book exploring the world of octopuses, chiefly the giant pacific octopuses that live in the New England aquarium. The author takes us on a journey through her own discovery of these amazing animals - she even learns to scuba dive in order to gain a deeper (pardon the pun) understanding of their world. It's not a purely technical book through as there are long asides about the people working in the aquarium and their relationships to the world around them.

The book suffers from a degree of repetition:

"They lay strands of eggs that look like grains of rice"

"She is protecting all those eggs, each of which is only the size of a grain of rice"

"Octopuses grow from the size of a grain of rice"

"Hatching from an egg the size of a grain of rice, one can grow both longer and heavier than a man in three years."

Yeah, we get the grain of rice thing! Enough already!

The book also strays into some slightly dodgy territory when the author religion and the "soul" of the octopus, and when she dips into anthropomorphism and tells us, with no evidence (because how could there be?) "we knew in that moment that Octavia had not only remembered us and recognized us; she had wanted to touch us again."

4 people found this helpful

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Charlotte

thought provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2018

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This is a really lovely book and quite an incredible story. It is easy to read and has been a good escape on my lunch and on busy days, leaving me with a constant stream of questions about consciousness, inter-species communication. I'm now hungry to find out more! Since my last visit to a large aquarium I have been fascinated by octopuses, and this book has deepened and strengthened my love for them, along with all sea creatures, and made me feel so much more connected to their world.

2 people found this helpful

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Graham Turnbull

Aliens from our own planet

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2017

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Loved this book. Had no idea that octopuses (yes that's the correct way to spell the plural) could be so interesting. Like aliens from our own planet. Octopuses and us split in the evolutionary tree of live about 500 million years ago and they have developed their own type of intelligence. Very easy to read. Difficult in fact to put down. You will never eat octopus again when you realise how amazing they are.

3 people found this helpful

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Tracy Aitken

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2017

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This is a truly marvellous book as moving as it is scientifically informing. The octopus has always fascinated me and this book has only deepened that fascination so much so that on completion I enrolled on a marine and Antartic aquatic course.
Buy this book. It’s wonderful.

4 people found this helpful

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Twinkle

told in beautiful prose. I learnt a lot about the octopus

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2017

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A lovely book, told in beautiful prose. I learnt a lot about the octopus. I have never really thought about their lives before, but it helped me to see nature differently and with more compassion. I judge a book to be good if at the end I feel I have learnt something about life that would help me to be better and I felt that with this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Richard Tol

More autobiography than natural history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2016

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The blurb promises a classic girl meets octopus story. And it is. Only at the end, you will have learned a lot about the girl and very little about the octopus.

10 people found this helpful

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Rhine Maiden

One taste and the octopus will know everything about you!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2019

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I took this book on holiday and enjoyed the first few chapters with wonderful insights into the behaviour, life and death of octopuses in captivity. Author shows real passion for the creatures and you won't want to eat one after reading this book. I found the descriptions about scuba-diving a bit boring despite this being a window into the wilder sea-world

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Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2018

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A good read but too many anecdotes and not enough science

3 people found this helpful

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Bluejun

You will never order Octopus to eat again

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2018

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A really moving story of Sy Montgomery's passion for and connection with Octopuses. Absolutely amazing animals.

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amazonian

Enjoyable, fascinating & inspiring reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 18, 2020

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I really enjoyed this book & the wonders of the octopus. How little we humans are aware of in regard to other life forms!

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Clare Powell

The most beautiful book I've ever read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2017

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The most beautiful book I've ever read - the sentience of an octopus ❤️......I read it overnight....it's wonderful. Their intelligence was a revelation to me.

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Jackie Marshall

Engaging book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2018

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Well written, friendly, informative, and fun.

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RARA

A beautiful book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2019

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I am now madly, deeply in love with octopuses! The most evocative and amazing read.

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Penelope

Never underestimate sea life!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2017

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For anyone who loves animals and an insight into their wonderful ways, this book a delight!

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