8
Emotions


Octopuses

Reaching out a delicate tipped tentacle to the human swimming near her, she thought, “I feel, therefore I am.”

 

One summer’s day in 2012 in the heart of England, a group of eminent neuroscientists, accompanied by theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Stephen Hawking, stood on the steps of Cambridge University and delivered what has come to be known as the “Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness (aka the “Cambridge Declaration”).”¹ It is a dense two-page document that concludes with this statement: “The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.” In short, Animals have brains with capacities comparable to our own. Other scientists, such as Erich Jarvis, a comparative neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, concur. While Tortoises, Parrots, and Elephants look and do things differently from us, they think, feel, and possess consciousness as we do.²

Most biomedical researchers were not shocked by the news. The Cambridge Declaration conforms to the foundations that have shaped their research practices. Scientific studies, particularly those investigating how the brain does and doesn’t work, rely on cross-species commonality to draw inferences from Animal experimental subjects to humans. Bats, Cats, Mice, Monkeys, and many more species are used as surrogates to explore the workings of the human brain-mind’s emotional and thought processes. We experience this relatedness in everyday living with family Dogs and Cats, as well as with other Animals.

In many ways, therefore, the Cambridge Declaration is unsurprising—except for one sentence: “Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.” Including Octopuses. What the scientists are saying is that, despite their common portrayal as menacing, mindless monsters of the deep, Octopuses have the wherewithal to be as aware and cognizant of their surrounds and themselves as we are—perhaps even more so.

Take Paul, for example. He was an Octopus held in captivity who was able to outcompete humans by successfully predicting the winners of all seven matches Germany played in the 2010 World Cup.³ The seemingly endless stories of similar feats of extraordinary, almost otherworldly, mental agility and acumen have prompted some to speculate that Octopuses are not of this Earth but rather are aliens.⁴

Yet, according to evolution, they are indeed Earthlings. The Octopus we recognize today seems to have taken form around or before 164 million years ago.⁵ Octopuses eventually radiated into three hundred or more different species who live scattered across the Earth’s oceans in diverse habitats, from the deepest blue seas to the shallowest reef.⁶ Genetically speaking, however, it has been a much longer time since humans and Octopuses last shared a common ancestor. Compared to the Cow and Dog lineages who split from humans around ninety-two million years ago,⁷ our last connection to Octopuses was a lot farther back: almost six hundred million years.⁸

Although modern human beings like to think of themselves as a separate, unique species, brain capacities have been conserved across species with different evolutionary trajectories.⁹ Vertebrates—backboned Animals like Parrots, Beavers, and humans—have the same basic brains attached to a spine that can do the same things. This recognition of parallel neurocapacities is a fairly recent discovery in Western science. Birds, for instance, while sharing a common ancestor with Reptiles and Mammals, went a different route and developed a different neuroanatomy (nervous system structure and organization).¹⁰ Because of an error in nomenclature combined with a misinterpretation of Avian internal brain cell structure, it was believed that Birds and Reptiles lacked parts of the brain that we and other Mammals enjoy. Our cerebrum, which includes the neocortex, is homologous with that of Parrots and Crocodiles. Birds do have a kind of neocortex; it is just shaped differently from ours. A vast ethological inventory associated with these neural substrates shows that Ravens, Crows, Parrots, and other Bird species exhibit all manner of traits once thought uniquely human: vocal learning, complex language, episodic memory, emotional complexity, tool use, and maternal/paternal feelings and behaviors.¹¹ The startling statement made in the Cambridge Declaration is that, despite their radically different body and brain architecture, Octopuses also have these capacities.

Relative to body size, Octopus brains are very large. Two-thirds of their neurons, however, are located in their arms; as Natural History Museum curator Jon Ablett puts it, they function like “small brains.”¹² Octopuses’ arm neurons are collected into many ganglia, clusters of nerve cells that carry messages to and from the central nervous system. Each of the eight arms has its own sensors that provide an Octopus with a sense of touch, smell, and taste, and thus the ability to detect even the tiniest whiff of chemical change in the water. Not only are their arms nuanced sensors and very powerful “doers”; they also seem to participate in a kind of partnered as well as locally controlled movement and decision-making. Octopuses appear to be a perfect example of the impossibility of dividing body from mind.

But Octopuses don’t fit any current understanding of intelligence or cognition. They seem to live outside usual conceptualizations.¹³ Philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith, who is fascinated by what Octopuses can tell us about the evolution of consciousness, compares and contrasts invertebrate and vertebrate brains in this way: “When vertebrate brains are compared to octopus brains, all bets—or rather, all mappings—are off. There is no part-by-part correspondence between the parts of their brains and ours. Indeed, octopuses have not even collected the majority of their neurons inside their brains; most of the neurons are found in their arms.”¹⁴ Instead of centralized organization like vertebrate brains, Octopuses’ mind power appears to be somewhat distributed, and coordinated, between their head and the rest of their eight-armed bodies.¹⁵ An Octopus’s “nervous system as a whole is a more relevant object than the brain: it’s not clear where the brain itself begins and ends, and the nervous system runs all through the body.”¹⁶ Using panoramic eyes to provide information to the arms, the Octopuses’ semiautonomous arms maintain to some degree a “mind of their own,” and they carry out their own fine-tuned explorations. These observations have led to vigorous discussions as to whether Octopuses are examples of embodied cognition,¹⁷ which contrasts with the idea that the brain is like a computer or the sole seat of knowing.

This intriguing neural design is expressed in a variety of equally intriguing capabilities. Octopuses love to play and have an incredible ability to figure things out, even when confronted with tasks and puzzles they would not find in their natural habitat. Captive-held Octopuses in laboratories and public aquaria, for example, are notorious for taking things apart, like lids from screw-top jars and parts of their holding tanks. They are perspicacious, accomplishing Houdini-like tricks and doing them at just the right moment when no one—no human with the potential to interfere—is looking. At one university laboratory aquarium, an Octopus routinely squirted water at light bulbs, which short-circuited expensive electrical systems. This happened so frequently that the institute was eventually compelled to close the exhibit and release the Octopus to the wild; they could not afford to repair the Octopus’s sabotage.¹⁸

They also do clever things like plugging up a tank’s outflow, which causes the tank to overflow and flood the room. Crab is a favorite food for Octopuses, but because of its expense, keepers and scientists often provide captive-held Octopuses with lower-grade frozen food. One Octopus was known for taking the thawed food provided by the aquarium and, as soon as the keeper passed by or left the room, flushing the distasteful morsels down the outflow pipe: out of sight, out of mind. Octopus skills of discernment also extend to making shrewd judgments about humans. Octopuses are very picky about who they like and dislike, whether the humans who keep them captive or visitors to the aquaria, and will play tricks on those who fall short of their approval. Like Elephants, Octopuses have long memories and recall who did what to them, for better or for worse.

The more we learn about Octopuses, the more fascinating they become. Differences in brain architecture is just one of their many mysteries. Octopuses have eight arms with amazing ability to move; they have hydrostatic support rather than skeletal support; they can “smell by touch” with chemoreceptors; they can rejuvenate their own brains; and they have three hearts that pump blue-green, not red, blood.¹⁹ Oxygen-carrying copper, in lieu of iron molecules, produces the difference between Octopus and human blood color.

As if these facts were not enough, there is something else that researchers find even more intriguing: Octopus RNA editing.²⁰ To survive changing environments, organisms need to adapt. Adaptive evolution occurs through effective mutations, which are positively selected across multiple generations.²¹ Relative to epigenetic changes, which can also be inherited, adaptation through natural selection (which involves changes in DNA sequences) is regarded as more stable.²² Germline DNA, the blueprint instructions given to us by our ancestors, is the stronghold of genetic coding. In order for these instructions to be carried out, they are transcribed into RNA, which then translates this information into proteins—molecules responsible for performing critical intracellular tasks. DNA stores genetic data in the form of instructions; RNA passes those instructions on; and proteins follow the instructions and carry out the work. Sometimes, things get lost in translation and RNA gets “edited” before it is used to make proteins. This rapid alteration allows for changes to be made without changing the DNA instruction manual.

For most organisms, mutations occur in DNA that are then transcribed into RNA. The RNA editing process in Mammals is relatively infrequent (although researchers are discovering that it occurs more often in humans and other Animals than originally thought).²³ When it does occur, it is limited to a few, presumably relatively unimportant sites in the entire genetic scheme of things. Compared to Mammals, invertebrates appear to have much higher levels of editing and recoding.²⁴ RNA editing occurs in Squids, Octopuses, and Cuttlefish (but not the Nautilus) at locations that exert a tremendous effect on nervous system proteins,²⁵ allowing them to function at low temperatures.²⁶

What this suggests is that while Mammals may largely adapt to environmental change through germline mutation²⁷ (changes in inherited, genetically coded DNA) across generations, along with epigenetic changes in one or more generations, the Octopus genome has remained much the same for a very long time. The Octopus’s pronounced RNA editing in their nervous system suggests that it permits dynamic, real-time responses to environmental change and situations—an intrinsic flexible adaptability that does not have to tinker with the genome.²⁸

RNA editing may be the key to how Octopus mental, sensory, and emotional capacities became so complex. They use processes and machinery that Mammals use differently. While Octopus DNA has remained relatively stable, RNA editing has been very busy providing Octopuses and others with increasingly complex and adaptive capacities, whether these changes have to do with responding to shifts in ocean temperature or some other experience. There are other characteristics indicating that there is much more about Octopuses’ inner lives than our human philosophy can dream. In addition to body, eye, and arm movements, Octopuses express an amazing repertoire of communication, much of which may be undetectable by the human eye.

Eric Kreit is an electrical engineer who investigates ways to create intricate pixel displays. Despite the complexity that human technology is able to generate, Octopus talents remain unchallenged: “Of all of the organisms in the animal kingdom capable of colour modulation, cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish and octopus) are able to produce the widest range of colours and patterns to help them adapt to their visually diverse marine environments as well as signal and communicate with their own species and others.”²⁹

Skin color and texture are directed by the Octopus’s nervous system, which controls tiny muscles responsible for turning on and off minuscule bags of color embedded in the skin. Chromatophores—pigment-containing cells, each one containing one specific color—are protected by the dermis (skin layer). When signaled, the neurons activate the muscles around the chromatophore, which expand or contract the color sac to turn it on or off, as the case may be. Even scientists are moved to describe Octopus coloration in poetic ways, comparing the fleeting millisecond-alternating waves of color to passing clouds: “The tremendous capacity of the chromatophore system to change its colour across space and time has allowed these animals to produce complex visual displays to conspecific and heterospecific targets, including the aptly-named ‘passing cloud’.”³⁰

Beyond chromatophores, there are three more color elements: iridophores, leucophores, and photophores.³¹ Iridophores (“bearers of the rainbow”) are cells that reflect incoming light at different wavelengths and polarities (photons vibrating in one plane) and lie below the layer of chromatophores. Below them are the leucophores, directed by the chromatophores and iridophores, which become the color of the light wavelengths shined upon them. Finally, there are light-producing cells called photophores, which create light through bioluminescence and seem to function largely for communication.

Together, these remarkable mind-driven mechanics yield an incredible palette of unimaginable variety that colors the Octopus when, how, and where she wishes. Somewhat surprisingly, while they can perceive polarized light, textures, and shapes, Octopuses are color-blind, a finding that has puzzled researchers.³² Why the fantastic ability to change colors and create stupendous displays for potential mates if the recipient is color-blind? The answer may relate somehow to the unusual U-shaped pupils that Cuttlefish have evolved and may give the invertebrate the ability to pick up and focus certain wavelengths on the retina.³³

Generally, changes in coloration and texture are used in two ways: to blend in with the surrounding environment for protection from would-be attackers, such as Sharks (concealment), and to express and convey information (communication).³⁴ The fact that these changes are instigated by or managed via the nervous system means that Octopus coloration links internal information systems (emotions, feelings, and thoughts) with external information systems (communication), or language.³⁵ As the Cambridge Declaration maintains, “The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures.” In simpler language, this says that you don’t have to have a brain with the same architecture as ours to experience the rainbow of emotions and feelings that colors our lives and experiences. Octopuses have neural substrate capacities for complex emotions.

Most scientists are slow to admit that Animals, let alone Octopuses, have emotions, despite acknowledging their neurobiological and cognitive capabilities and diverse forms of intelligence.³⁶ Conventionally, Octopus capacities for feelings are narrowly described according to eight criteria:

Possession of nociceptors (receptors that detect noxious stimuli—such as temperatures hot enough to burn, or a cut); possession of parts of the brain that integrate sensory information; connections between nociceptors and those integrative brain regions; responses affected by local anaesthetics or analgesics; motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward; flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat; associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitization; behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured.³⁷

The reluctance to admit to Cephalopod affect is reminiscent of how human babies were once regarded. Up until fairly recently, scientists and medical practitioners did not believe that human newborns felt pain like adults. It took research, such as a 2015 fMRI study, to provide hard data confirming otherwise.³⁸ But, as Charles Darwin observed, even without neuroscience at hand, “There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, or happiness and misery.”³⁹ Western scientists have a long history of uneasiness around the subject of emotions.

Western scientists, and Enlightenment culture at large, have conventionally looked down on emotion as something superfluous, even detrimental.⁴⁰ Generally, it has been cognition that has garnered approbation, being regarded as the supreme quality, with humans at the pinnacle of competence. In contrast, emotions were deemed primitive contaminants that marred rationality and were best kept suppressed, far and away from objective, clear thinking. Such views persist in most contemporary scientific research and scholarship as part of “objectivity.”⁴¹ Researchers are taught to block their subjective thoughts and emotions, to avoid biasing the facts. This attitude, however, is specious. We feel our way through the world, thinking with feelings, because a mind “is neither an airy spirit nor an exquisite computing device but a creaky old calculator sunk in a sticky swamp of feelings. . . . In truth, we think because we feel what we are.”⁴²

Although it may be possible to follow an “objective” procedure, every protocol is based in a specific worldview about what is important, as well as conscious and unconscious presuppositions. Euro-American perceptions, for example, are generally biased toward focusing on foregrounded objects rather than on a whole picture and its relationships, which is more typical of Asian cultures.⁴³ The “view from nowhere” that Western science employs actually represents a perspective of subject-object separation that is uncharacteristic of most thought systems.⁴⁴ Science has moved away from objectivity as indwelling, a first-person view of “feeling-with,”⁴⁵ to an externalized, third-person view of detachment.⁴⁶ Western culture has defined this view as intelligence, but it is emotionally and relationally detached and is harmful when applied in Nature, which does not match up with abstractions of a third-person view. Ironically, because neuroscience uses devastatingly cruel methods of investigation when it comes to Animals, this branch of science has been a strong contributor to changing the dominating perspective and attitudes about feelings and emotions—even in nonhumans.

Emotions are now appreciated as essential for healthy development and lifelong functioning.⁴⁷ Recognition of the importance of emotion has led to the establishment of affective neuroscience, the study of the neurobiological basis of emotions.⁴⁸ They play a key role in how we react, act, and make decisions. Indeed, they are core to who we are.⁴⁹ Emotions are formative to the development of an ecological sense of self and an understanding of ourselves in relation to the diverse social and physical environments in which we live. Processes of emotional development are part of becoming aware of ourselves as a bounded entity (self-coherence), how we can and do affect others by our actions (self-agency), feeling (self-affectivity), and the continuity of our personal narrative as we move through life (self-history and autobiography).⁵⁰ Feelings are not hardwired instincts but rather are developed through experience. Emotions are shaped by multiple factors: the sensations we feel in our bodies, who and what we encounter, and cultural values and norms.⁵¹ They are sensitive players in meaning-making and helping us discern our bodies, thoughts, and feelings from those of others.

At their foundation, emotions are part of consciousness and cognition, and initiators of conation (the volition or will to do something). Our basic emotion systems are centrally placed in the brain to readily interact with both cognitive structures and physiological and motor outputs.⁵² Prior to studies in affective neuroscience, psychological theories treated emotion and cognition as separate entities. But when we look more closely at brain structure, processes, and functions, we see that this separation is artificial.

The function of appraisal (how the brain cognitively assesses what is important to the self), for example, includes perception, evaluation, attention, memory, and executive functions, which involve areas throughout the brain, from the brain stem to the cerebral cortex. Emotions, which are attributed to arousal, including action tendencies, attention, and feelings, are generally placed in the brain stem, hypothalamic structures, and cerebellum. Appraisal is actually brought about by corticolimbic activities. Subsequently, cognitive and affective processes and functions overlap in the brain. At the neuronal level in the cortex, there is no distinction between cognition and emotion.⁵³ Because of the integrated nature of the brain and its operations, it is much more useful to view emotion and cognition as one functional, interdependent unit. There is no emotion without a thought, and no thought without emotion. Our actions are informed by both.⁵⁴

Emotions are an infant’s first tools. Babies are automatically geared to learn physical and emotional associations, valence, and value. Associative learning in the midbrain modifies basic functions that govern attention and alertness, thereby providing a baby with a way to learn from a given experience. Every experience involves dual coding of physical perception and emotional response—What do I sense? and What is my reaction to it? Integrated cognition and emotion are part of development for every Animal. Intelligence relies on veridical (coinciding with reality) cognition and well-functioning emotional systems. Early life experience influences which emotions are prioritized, which ones are more easily activated, how well they support our cooperation with others, and which actions we learn to favor.⁵⁵

Because babies’ brains are shaped by who and what they encounter, they are motivated and ready to take imaginative action when they are born. In the womb, fetuses have already begun to develop self-organizing habits and a personality in response to experiences in the womb. Under good nested care during the first year of life, an infant’s amygdala begins to connect with the brain’s orbitofrontal gyrus (involved in the cognitive process of decision-making) and the anterior cingulate gyrus (involved in the emotional, autonomic motor system), which builds the infant’s capacity to understand and organize emotions.⁵⁶ When early experience is neglectful, abusive, or traumatic, an individual will have difficulty recognizing and interpreting emotions appropriately,⁵⁷ undermining social and moral behavior.⁵⁸ This is why healthful, species-appropriate caregiving characterizing the evolved nest is crucial.

Socioemotional development begins immediately after birth, involving the rapid growth of complex, interconnected brain and hormonal processes. We can look at these processes at three different levels.⁵⁹ Primary-process psychological experiences, available at birth, are basic, built-in emotions including physiological drives such as hunger, thirst, and sensory reactions to pleasure and displeasure. They seed selfhood and continue to develop further with experience. Secondary-process psychological experiences develop via learning within the basal ganglia, structures like those found in the body and legs of an Octopus. Early-life learning develops through a fear system (via the basolateral and central amygdala), instrumental and operant conditioning, such as the exploration system (via the nucleus accumbens), and habit formation, such as emotional and behavioral habits (via the dorsal striatum). Postnatal caregiving has the greatest effect here and is formative in shaping personality and preferences through effortless, nonconscious learning.

Tertiary-process psychological experiences entail more conscious cognitive processes. For this reason, they are more accessible to memory. These processes include executive functions (governed by the frontal lobe), emotional orientation and regulation (governed by the medial frontal region), and “free will,” represented in higher working memory function. Early experiences with carers play a role here as well, although later life experiences can have a significant influence because executive functions take up to three decades to develop fully.⁶⁰

While all three levels of socioemotional development are influenced by cultural patterns and values, tertiary processes draw heavily from cultural narratives to interpret our experiences. The third level guides carer behavior and thus has the potential to alter secondary processes in the child through carer treatment, and thereby can significantly inform the development of sociality and morality. Together, primary, secondary, and tertiary neural-emotional systems come together to create our personalities. With supportive care, they promote our well-being and provide effective solutions to basic questions of survival: How do I stay intact? How do I get what I need? How do I keep what I need? How do I get and keep social supports?

Through ongoing experiences of intersubjectivity—shared emotional and mental states—infants start on the pathway to socioemotional intelligence. Young children are in a receptive state during their first years, ready to embed in their personalities what they experience about self and the world, building habits by mirroring the actions of those around them. They are primed to learn how to relate well,⁶¹ and they are wired for social interaction. Nested care is designed to respond accordingly.

Nested care teaches and tunes socioemotional systems.⁶² These systems are the source of practical intelligence. When children’s companions treat them receptively, these capacities develop in healthy ways through reciprocal communication. A child is immersed in a stream of emotional-cognitive exchanges that guide proper action, ways of being and behaving that are congruent with the social and natural environment in which all grow and live. Carers attune to the infant’s changing expressions of energy to help ensure an optimal state of being. Another way to put it is that they tune up their baby’s emotions, fluidly using multiple modes of connection, including voice, touch, and movement. In this way, playful interactions between carer and child enhance the child’s physical, visceral energy. Through this process, repeated many, many times, human carers and babies build customs together, creating shared stories and games of rhythmic musicality accompanied by ever-present nonverbal expressions of intention.⁶³

This period of life is a very sensitive time emotionally and neurobiologically. Babies react, for example, with “pride” when appreciation is shown of their meaningful action, and with “shame” and distress when a conversation partner is nonresponsive.⁶⁴ Something as simple as a hug, a snuggle, or an embrace—or a lack thereof—initiates short- and long-term effects in the toddler. The range of external gestures experienced by a child directly translate internally to program body and mind.

Carer-initiated neurohormonal processes facilitate the infant’s capacity to develop central and peripheral response control of his emotions with his orbitofrontal cortex.⁶⁵ Repeated, positive, and synchronized caregiver-child interactions shape baby’s self-regulation capacities through organizing connections among the orbitofrontal cortex, mesocortical, and mesolimbic pathways.⁶⁶ Empathy, self-regulation, eye gaze, facial expression, the experience of social pleasure, sensitivity to others, and an understanding of others are all cultivated, governed by right hemisphere development.⁶⁷ All of this is centrally involved in implicit learning and unconscious relational processes throughout life.

Consistent affectionate nested care ensures that the baby’s brain and coupled cognitive and emotional development function well.⁶⁸ As we have already discussed, left-cradling is an example of how this is accomplished through mother-baby geometry, which optimizes the flow of information from the infant’s left ear and eye to the mother’s right hemisphere and vice versa. Signals between the dyad promote a “relational unconscious” that includes both consciousness and unconsciousness. As Allan Schore notes: “This right-lateralized emotional brain is deeply connected into the body and the autonomic nervous system (ANS). It has a different anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry than the later-forming left hemisphere. The right hemisphere processes not only emotion but, more precisely, unconscious emotion and is the locus of an implicit procedural memory system.”⁶⁹ In other words, early carer-infant relationships work on the physical and psychological levels to cocreate a right-lateralized system of mind and body.

Unnested care, abuse, or neglect, on the other hand, directly interferes with right hemisphere development. Notably, core faculties governed by the right hemisphere have increasingly diminished in schoolchildren as a result of unnested care and institutional emphasis on cognitive skills. The recent parallel rise in bullying, violence, suicide, and asociality has prompted efforts to integrate social and emotional learning into school curricula.⁷⁰ This is also why early trauma, neglect, and abuse have such deep and long-lasting effects.

Responsive environments enhance our positive emotions and calm down our negative emotions, shaping a self-regulated, cooperative personality and coherent self. They set the patterns for the strength and connection of emotion systems.⁷¹ When properly developed, emotions facilitate successful adaptation to the environment, and they generate in the child a sense of confident competence and secure attachment, thereby signaling that neurobiological structures are developing in a healthy manner.⁷²

Subtle and careful reading of and responses to an infant’s cues help babies refine emotional and physiological experience and increase social capacities.⁷³ Over time, in literate cultures perception and action uncouple and become mediated by symbolic thought (the use of abstract concepts through words, gestures, and numbers). Abstract ideas that emerge from lived experience retain their emotional flavoring in memory, though symbols learned in emotionally detached settings (such as classrooms) are often not retained in memory. Psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan and philosopher Stuart Shanker describe affect and emotions as “the source of symbols, the architect of intelligence, the integrator of processing capacities, and the psychological foundation of society.”⁷⁴ But are these key social processes present in Octopuses?

Socially, Octopuses do not seem to show the intimacy shown by Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles. Although there is great variability among Octopus species, compared to the constant proximity of Elephants to one another, Octopuses seem much less dependent on close exchanges with fellow Cephalopods. Indeed, in some instances intraspecies relationships seem strained and fraught. But to label Octopuses as “asocial” is both anachronistic and inaccurate. As the old maxim says, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Other Animals have also been labeled asocial until it was eventually discovered that, similar to human cultures that vary hugely in their ways of interacting, Animals who do not spend a lot of time together still develop deep relationships. These relationships just work from and in different spatial and temporal frameworks.

For example, biologists used to define Pumas as the quintessential conspecific Lone Rangers who never associated with each other, save for sex. Their presumed asociality was regarded as extreme, to the point of intraspecific lethality. But when the data were examined more closely and added to observations collected from motion detector technology, researchers discovered that Pumas enjoy a rich social network, including sharing precious kills.⁷⁵

The lesson is that each and every organism has its own social Umwelt, its own ways of interacting and forming relationships, not only with their own species but also with other Plants and Animals. The more we strip away culturally embedded projections and assumptions reified by Western science’s self-proclaimed authority, the more we see and understand about our Animal kin.⁷⁶ Indeed, when Octopuses’ nearly unsurpassed abilities to change body color, patterns, and texture are revisited and viewed from this perspective, we discover deep emotional and psychological waters within them—in particular, a highly refined emotional intelligence.

Early-life experiences are central in the development of emotional intelligence, the capacity to understand and regulate one’s emotions appropriate to a situation and in socioecological interpersonal interactions. Psychologist Daniel Goleman defined emotional intelligence with four criteria: self-awareness (the ability to perceive what we are feeling and why), empathy (knowing what someone else is feeling), self-regulation and management (the ability to handle distressing emotions appropriately), and comprehensive skills that bring all of these qualities together for appropriate thought and action.⁷⁷

Emotional intelligence is inextricably accompanied by social intelligence, a concept first coined by Edward Thorndike in 1920.⁷⁸ Social intelligence generally refers to the ability to understand and respond appropriately in interactions with another. In a broader, Nature-inclusive understanding, social intelligence encompasses ecological intelligence. Social and emotional intelligence work hand in hand and are cultivated in the evolved nest to optimize living well with others in sensitive and respectful ways. Octopuses seem to do this well by using their partnered head-arm brains, fantastic coloration language, and extensive RNA editing. Although young Octopuses do not receive postnatal care emblematic of altricial species, they are nonetheless raised with equal devotion.

Octopuses are semelparous, meaning that they lay eggs and give birth only once in their lifetimes. There is between-species variation, but generally, Octopuses find and secure a den where they lay thousands of eggs. The mother Octopus stays with her brood, protecting them and fanning them with freshly oxygenated water until they hatch, after which, similar to Salmon, she succumbs, having not eaten for the entire gestation period. Given the increasing evidence of the critical role that parent-embryo-egg communication plays,⁷⁹ it would not be surprising if we one day discover that Octopus maternal care may impart its own version of prenatal shaping.

In any case, Octopuses cultivate and make use of their keen socioemotional intelligence, which is sensitive to their own state of being as well as that of those around them, to navigate successfully in their underwater world. There is broad variation among Octopus species’ personalities and cultural practices. Some are described as very curious, even gregarious, literally reaching out to meet and greet human divers and accompanying shoals of fish; others are less so.⁸⁰ Their well-known curiosity is an expression of their depth of interest in others, a social proclivity to associate with and understand their neighbors and anyone else who comes in peace without the intention of predation. While the classic Mammalian right brain seems to be absent (even though Octopuses are, like humans, bilaterally organized), Octopuses, Squids, and Cuttlefish demonstrate comparable body awareness, sense of self, social awareness, empathy, ability to interpret sociality and emotional cues, and capacities to regulate stress and mediate their behavior, all of which are integral to socioemotional intelligence.⁸¹

Octopuses’ profound emotional intelligence is apparent when they accomplish something amazing, such as escape from captivity. One Octopus named Inky (whose body, not including arms, was about a foot in diameter) managed to squeeze through a tiny opening at the top of a National Aquarium of New Zealand exhibit, fall to the floor, and, although an aquatic creature, make his way on the ground into a 164-foot-long drainpipe, which fed into the ocean waters of Hawke’s Bay, and disappear—never to be seen again by human eyes.⁸² He accomplished this by being fully cognizant of his body state and its relationship to the environment. Inky also exercised Daniel Goleman’s third criterion of emotional intelligence, self-regulation. Given the literal lengths that he went, one can imagine his tremendous pent-up passion to escape his prison and be free. Yet Inky managed these deep emotional impulses. He bided his time to plan his escape, and he acted when the right moment arrived.

As Octopuses move around their watery home, their self-awareness and empathy allow them to evade dangerous carnivores, such as Pyjama Sharks who live off the coast of South Africa, where Octopuses are plentiful. Evasion is successful only if one judges one’s physical abilities to move and dart on the correct path at the right speed (self-aware), and if the pursued rightly assesses the mental and physical states of the pursuer (empathy). A more tender expression of empathy is shown in the documentary film My Octopus Teacher, where diver Craig Foster and an Octopus become friends and develop a trusting, loving relationship. Their interactions and expressions depict a tremendous sense of shared care and understanding.⁸³

Octopuses demonstrate the fourth criterion of emotional intelligence through their ability to integrate all the other dimensions of this capacity. Inky, for example, was able to gather the necessary information derived from internal stimuli (self-aware, subjective information communicated via his version of the limbic system) and external stimuli (empathetic, objective information about the lay of the aquarium and the outlet pipe’s connection to the ocean), time his actions correctly (self-regulation), and then, putting this all together, judge the appropriate strategy with a measure of confidence and self-efficacy.

For Octopuses, however, all this recent scientific attention and human discoveries bring a mixture of good and bad news. On the one hand, Octopuses and other invertebrates are now receiving greater respect and appreciation. On the other, they are also being seen as a new source for human genetic medicine research, to assess disease pathogenesis and progression.⁸⁴ This means that various species of Octopuses are, similar to other Animals, bred in captivity by the millions⁸⁵ and subjected to procedures that are ethically banned for use on human subjects. Octopuses are now being heralded as the “new lab rat,” following the fates of those countless Animals who are subjected to the most heinous, painful, and obliterating experiments for the purpose of fueling Western science’s insatiable appetite for information, no matter the cost to life.⁸⁶ Octopuses are yet another entry in Western science’s list of profound ethical-epistemic disconnects.

If Octopuses, Rats, Cats, and Planaria are adequate models of human brains, minds, and emotions for use in experiments prohibited for our species, then nonhuman species qualify for as much protection as humans are afforded. Instead of adding another set of persons to science and society’s list of victims, we would do best by adopting the Octopus’s emotional and social intelligence, which is expressed less by what they do than the fact that they do not do to us what we do to them. This is another lesson from the connected companionship worldview.