There’s something strange about octopuses, something that makes them quite unlike any other animal on Earth. They reach into our imaginations with their suckered arms, grab hold and don’t let go.
Sometimes the octopuses we conjure up are charming and companionable. Ringo Starr invited us beneath the waves, to the welcoming seclusion of an octopus’s garden. Disney’s Finding Dory sees the eponymous fish having an adventure with Hank, a grumpy octopus.
Often, though, fictional octopuses are far more frightening. In Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a fearsome pack of poulpes (French for octopus) attack Captain Nemo’s submarine. James Bond tangled with Octopussy’s band of female gangsters, all tattooed with the deadly blue-ringed octopus. And author H. P. Lovecraft unleashed Cthulhu, a monstrous, deep-dwelling humanoid with a giant octopus for a head, who has inspired all manner of tentacle-clad characters, from the noodle-faced Ood in Dr Who to Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Octopus oddities have even led people to believe they hold psychic powers. Paul the Octopus, from a German aquarium, allegedly predicted winners of the 2010 Football World Cup. Given a choice of two food-filled boxes decorated in competing teams’ flags, Paul kept picking Germany (perhaps recognizing the bold stripes), and it just happened that Germany kept winning.
Our familiarity with all these fun and formidable octopuses has, at least until recently, been rather at odds with our understanding of the real, living creatures. Gradually we’re discovering that fact is often far stranger than fiction.