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.

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.

I was certain I would love this book having encountered many octopuses while diving, and firmly being in the camp that they, like other living creatures, are sentient souls. We cannot know specifically what they are thinking but lets give them credit for having thoughts and capacity for something more than simple reaction to physical stimuli. I was eager to learn more about this.

The book gets two stars because I did read it in its entirety - an easy enough read - and enjoyed the occasional information tidbits; furthermore if this treatment of the topic persuades anyone out there to think anew about such creatures, then despite shortcomings, there is some value to it.

However, I give it no more than two stars for two reasons:
1. This was pretty thin gruel, as others have said, with respect to any new or particularly insightful information about octopus behaviors or relationships or what we might deduce about octopus intellect or emotional life from closely and rigorously observing these things. This more is a story about the author's many visits 'behind the scenes' to a series of captured aquarium octopuses, and about the aquarium staff associated with that activity. The main gist about 'soulfulness' is drawn from how these confined creatures responded to the author, and others, in ways that she interpreted to be friendship. Perhaps so, perhaps not - she offers little to support this beyond the sensation of suckers winding up her arms, and what may have just as likely been the animals' desperate attempts to find relief from such close boring confines.

2. That leads to the second reason for only two stars. If as seems the case that the author and aquarium staff care so deeply for these creatures, how can they then reconcile confining - alone - in a small dark boring pickle barrel for months at a time, animals captured in young and mid-life from their wild free oceanic homes. It might just be that these octopuses rise up in their barrel prison and taste those protruding arms with their suckers because there is NOTHING ELSE TO DO other than dying of depression. This confinement seems cruel beyond imagining...indeed one of the captured octopuses does die trying to escape, and others chomp at the restraints in similar attempts. It seems we've come to some consensus that this is not the way to treat primates, why then should it be ok for marine creatures which are being highlighted in this very same book as smart, soulful, and sentient. Does not add up.

One can reasonably argue the value, plusses and minuses of zoos and aquarium in general, but capturing and tightly confining smart, free, wild animals for eventual display - and losing some in this process as the price of doing business - does have implications that are an inherent yet all but unacknowledged under-theme of this book. This created a wrinkle that this reader at least just could not overcome.

For a more cogent treatment of this topic, I recommend Carl Safina's 'Beyond Words, What Animals Think and Feel' or watch his excellent recent TED talk on the same topic.

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.