“ Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed; but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. Although we couldn’t have been more different — I, a terrestrial ve… Sy Montgomery
“ I am still learning how to be a good creature. Though I try earnestly, I often fail. But I am having a great life trying... Sy Montgomery
“ Always somewhere there is fire or smoke, insistent reminders of the greed consuming the world Sy Montgomery
“ Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways. Sy Montgomery
“ I never met a pig I didn't like. pigs are intelligent, emotional, and sensitive souls. They love company. They crave contact and comfort. Pigs have a delightful sense of mischief; most of them seem… Sy Montgomery
“ I often wish I could go back in time and tell my young, anxious self that my dreams weren't in vain and my sorrows weren't permanent. I can't do that, but I can do something better. I can tell you tha… Sy Montgomery
“ Humans have always exalted dreams. Pindar of Thebes, the Greek lyric poet, suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake. He believed that during a dream, the awakened soul ma… Sy Montgomery
“ A lion is a mammal like us; an octopus is put together completely differently, with three hearts, a brain that wraps around its throat, and a covering of slime instead of hair. Even their blood is a d… Sy Montgomery
“ The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shaman… Sy Montgomery
“ The emperor Caesar Augustus had a parakeet who greeted him daily, and after his victory over Mark Antony in Egypt in 29 B.C., he purchased a raven whose trainer had taught him to say Ave, Caesar Victo… Sy Montgomery
“ Laos is saddled with the distinction of one superlative: it is the most heavily bombed country on earth. During the nine-year secret war against the Communists, during the Vietnam War, the U. S. dropp… Sy Montgomery
“ The relationship that Jane Goodall has with the chimpanzees of Gombe—and that Dian Fossey had with the mountain gorillas she studied, and Biruté Galdikas has with the wild orangutans of Tanjung Puting… Sy Montgomery
“ Cambodia is the most heavily mined country on earth, with 4 to 8 million land mines, according to one estimate. Sy Montgomery
“ Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes—one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin… Sy Montgomery
“ The word compassion means with suffering. To have compassion is to willingly join in suffering—to show those you love that you will not let them suffer Sy Montgomery
“ Perhaps an even more surprising case was reported in June 2012, when a security officer at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium found a banana peel on the floor in front of the Shale Reef exhibit at 3 a… Sy Montgomery
“ But Wilson was ahead of the curve. Long before the first octopus-enrichment handbook was published, many octopuses ago, he set out to create a safe toy worthy of an octopus’s intellect. Working at his… Sy Montgomery
“ There are some scientists who frown upon such practices, believing that nature should run its course, Jane wrote in an early chapter of The Chimpanzees of Gombe, a scholarly compilation of her first t… Sy Montgomery
“ In his classic The Outermost House, American naturalist Henry Beston writes that animals are not brethren, they are not underlings but beings gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never… Sy Montgomery
“ For more than a year and a half, since meeting Athena, since coming to know Octavia and now Kali, each time I’ve reached into the tanks where we have brought these creatures into our world, I’ve longe… Sy Montgomery
