Many fascinating animals share this planet with us. I would say they are all fascinating in their own way. I find the one who bears the title of “marvel of the ocean” especially interesting. That would be the octopus.
The octopus has many characteristics that make it unique and it would be difficult to narrow that list down to one. Her fluid movements and uncanny intelligence certainly stand out. She seems almost alien in her physiology. The octopus shares a taxonomic class with the likes of the squid, cuttlefish and nautilus, the latter of which I had no familiarity with and required further reading.
The octopus, with characteristics common to other cephalopods, has its own resume of characteristics that make her unique, from problem-solving abilities to camouflage. This wonderful creature is both admired and studied for her many secrets.
The octopus has no bones to dictate shape, which allows her to compress and reshape herself to fit through very small openings and allows her to enjoy unparalleled flexibility. As a result, she wears the title of escape artist with great precision. She is designed for the utmost in maneuverability, stealth, and can explore the complex environments of coral reefs and rocky crevices.
Like the squid, the octopus has three hearts and due to the copper component, her blood is blue. She prefers to crawl on the ocean floor because while swimming, her systemic heart stops beating, quickly leading to exhaustion, while the other two hearts are busy pumping blood to the gills.
She is astonishingly intelligent, possibly the most advanced invertebrate on Earth. She can solve puzzles, navigate mazes, recognize individual humans and learns very quickly through observation, which is an ability that is considered rare even among vertebrates. Possibly her most fascinating trait is how her nervous system is distributed throughout the body, with two-thirds of the neurons in her arms, allowing each to have the ability to taste, touch and make decisions independently of the other body parts while still coordinating with each other as needed.
She is a solitary thinker, figuring out the world within which she lives in a hands-on way. For survival, she is an expert at camouflage, changing colour, pattern and texture in the blink of an eye. She lives but a brief life, of only one to two years. She lays thousands of eggs, tending them with selfless attention. Once they hatch, she dies, completing her brief but intense life cycle.
I had little awareness of the octopus until I stumbled upon the book Remarkably Bright Creatures written by Shelby van Pelt, her debut novel published in 2022. A film adaptation will be released in May 2026. The fear I might have felt at encountering an octopus was quickly transformed into admiration as I read this book. It is the touching story of grief, family and our need for connection, told through the relationship of a lonely woman and a giant Pacific octopus.
Next, I found my way to the Netflix film “My Octopus Teacher” released in 2020, a film that won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. This is an incredibly touching film and one I urge you to watch. Craig Foster, a filmmaker, spent a year nurturing a relationship with a common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) in a kelp forest near the Cape of Storms of Western South Africa.
Craig spent his childhood free diving in the kelp forest but was separated from that environment as an adult. He was working in the Kalahari Desert with the San, some of the best trackers of the world, while he was filming The Great Dance. These trackers lived “inside the natural world” while Craig was feeling “very much on the outside” of that world.
