Years ago I made the personal decision to stop eating octopus and squid at sushi restaurants. I honestly and truthfully believe them to be as intelligent as we are, just in different *directions*.
My mom and her wife volunteer as docents at the Hatfield Marine Center in Newport, OR. The Center catches, studies, and releases great Pacific octopuses every 6-8 weeks. Longer than that is considered cruel. Male octopuses don’t live very long - females live longer, but only until they lay a clutch of eggs. Then they starve to death protecting their hatchlings.
Depriving them of too much time is like solitary for DECADES for a human.
And the Hatfield treats them as close to people-in-different-shapes as possible. Octopuses learn individuals. Docents they like, they hug (since they taste through the sensors in their suction pads). Docents they don’t like they squirt with jets of water - and everyone knows that’s valid, and that docent is reassigned.
When the time period is up, the Hatfield takes the octopus in question out to the bay and releases him/her back to the sea. It’s a testament to their treatment that the animals tend to hug everyone goodbye, then swim away slowly. They form attachments.
I think they’re smart. I think their smarts involve their lives underwater, and not our technological world in the air - so they don’t LOOK smart to US.
I want to be kind and gentle with them. I wish I could talk to them and hear what they say to each other. I wish I could understand how they perceive and conceptualize the world - because it has to be SOMEWHAT similar to the way we do - look how their camouflage looks like how WE perceive the animals they’re pretending to be.
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