2nd quote from "The Soul of an Octopus" by Sy Montgomery

They breathe water. Their appendages are covered with dexterous, grasping suckers, a structure for which no mammal has an equivalent.

And not only are octopuses on the opposite side of the great vertebral divide that separates the back boned creatures such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish from everything else, they are classed within the invertebrates such as mollusks, as are slugs and snails and clams, animals that are not particularly known for their intellect. Clams don't even have brains.

More than half a billion years ago, the lineage that would lead to octopuses and the one leading to humans separated. Was it possible, I wondered, to reach another mind on the other side of that divide?

Octopuses represent the great mystery of the Other. 'They seem completely alien, and yet their world--the ocean--comprises far more of the earth(70percent of the surface area, more than 90 percent of the habitable space) than does land. Most animals on this planet live in the ocean. And most of them are invertabrates.

I wanted to meet the octopus. I wanted to touch an alternative reality. I wanted to explore a different kind of consciousness, if such a thing exists. What is it like to be an octopus? Is it anything like being a human? Is it even possible to know?

So, when the aquarium's director of public relations met me in the lobby and offered to introduce me to Athena, the octopus, I felt like a privileged visitor to another world. But what I began to discover was that day was my own sweet blue planet--a world breathtakingly alien, startling, and wondrous; a place where, after half a century of life on this Earth, much of it as a naturalist, I would at last feel fully at home.

End page 2 from "The Soul of an Octopus"