The screen was divided into twelve sections—each one playing a clip of an octopus. The species were different, but all the videos were of interactions with humans. In one, an octopus slithered along the deck of a ship and squeezed itself through a gap in the gunwale to escape. In another, an octopus hid in the bottom of a jar a Greek fisherman had brought on board his little boat. And so on—in each video, an encounter. And all of the encounters hostile to the octopus, threatening. The octopuses tried to get away from their captors. Dragged out of the sea, they struggled to escape.

“I’ve been trying to imagine,” Evrim said, “how the octopus must see us. I was thinking of the murder. There is something missing from the story.”

“A lot missing,” Ha agreed.

“Yes. A lot. But most importantly—the why of the attack. At first I was thinking that something must have happened that we don’t know about. Something that made the creature feel threatened. I was sure of it. But then I thought—what do humans do that doesn’t make the creature feel threatened? And the answer is—almost nothing. This was an extraordinarily intelligent animal even before it achieved symbolic communication, and its history with humans is filled with violence and threat.”

“Then you believe it has achieved symbolic communication.”

“I do. And tool use was something it had already achieved, long ago. And now we see that isn’t all—that perhaps it is making tools as well. But what I am worried about is … the human relation to the octopus. From its point of view. This was an extraordinary creature even before it achieved language, or tool-making. A master of survival and adaptation in the sea, living constantly in a state of threat—a state that demands fluid, continuous response. This is a shape-shifting hunter-gatherer. A master of its environment. Of camouflage and distraction. This is a creature who escapes death every day. Who kills every day to survive.”

“I compared it, in my book, to Odysseus,” Ha said. “They called him ‘the Man of Twists and Turns.’ That is the best analogy I could come up with. These are the heroes of the sea: survivors of a thousand challenges and misfortunes.”