They don’t want to hear how Octavia is different from us. They want to know how we’re the same. They know what it’s like to have an itch. They can imagine what it’s like to be a mother. This brief enc...
Wholeness feels like gratitude. Gratitude that we are safe and happy and together.
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...
Bear-time seems slow to us, perhaps, because we do not have the patience for such a life.
Humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness and that nonhuman animals, including all birds and mammals, and many other creatures, including octopuses [i...
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...
At California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium found a banana peel on the floor in front of the Shale Reef exhibit at 3 a.m. On closer inspection, the banana peel turned out to be a healthy, fist-size red octo...
Cambodia is the most heavily mined country on earth, with 4 to 8 million land mines, according to one estimate.
Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas modeled their approach on Jane Goodall’s: they began their studies by relinquishing control. In the masculine world of Western science, where achievement is typically m...
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...
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.
His coming to you, and your loving him, was a counterbalance, in a way, to the world’s mistreatment of pigs,
Hormones and neurotransmitters, the chemicals associated with human desire, fear, love, joy, and sadness, are highly conserved across taxa, Jennifer said. This means that whether you’re a person or a...
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...
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...
One of the most heartbreaking conditions of life on Earth is that most of the animals we love... die so long before we do.
I wonder: Can a brainless animal feel curiosity? Does it want to play? Or does it only want toys or food the way a plant wants the sun? Does a sea star experience consciousness? If it does, what does...
If the person was out of the room, the octopus would pull off the magnet on the inside of the tank which, with another magnet on the outside of the tank, held a glass-cleaning tool in place. The outsi...
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