Reverie. To share such a moment of deep tranquility with another being, especially one as different from us as the octopus, is a humbling privilege.
I’ve always harbored a fondness for monsters. Even as a child, I had rooted for Godzilla and King Kong instead of for the people trying to kill them. It had seemed to me that these monsters’ irritatio...
Just about every animal, Scott says—not just mammals and birds— can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy. Once you find the right way to work with an animal, be it an octopus or an ana...
Just about every animal, Scott says—not just mammals and birds—can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.
Volumes of history written in the ancient alphabet of G and C, A and T.
A far worse mistake than misreading an animal's emotions is to assume the animal hasn't any emotions at all.
A voltmeter picks up the fish’s electric pulse. A light, actually powered by the eel’s electricity, flashes across a panel built on top of the tank to show when the eel is hunting or stunning prey, an...
Always somewhere there is fire or smoke, insistent reminders of the greed consuming the world
And that was part of the tragedy: I had just started to know her. I was mourning the relationship that could have blossomed but didn’t have a chance to grow.
The bliss of stroking an octopus’s head is difficult to convey to most people, even to animal lovers.
Assessing the mind of a creature this alien demands that we be extraordinary flexible in our own thinking. Marine biologist James Wood suggests our hubris gets in our way.
At the Seattle Aquarium, Sammy the giant Pacific octopus enjoyed playing with a baseball-size plastic ball that could be screwed together by twisting the two halves. A staffer put food inside the ball...
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...
Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it.
But Christopher obeyed a higher calling: the intoxicating call of green grass and sunshine, the sweet scent of the earth on one of the last days of summer.
But I am also aware that in animals, as well as people, there is an inborn temperament, a way of seeing the world, that interacts with the environment, and that shapes personality. There’s nobody else...
Unlike the supply of dogs, the supply of good names isn't limitless.
But perhaps, in a world older and more complete than ours, there is a love that does not demand a reciprocal debt of need.
Cambodia is the most heavily mined country on earth, with 4 to 8 million land mines, according to one estimate.
One of the most heartbreaking conditions of life on Earth is that most of the animals we love... die so long before we do.
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