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Back The Octopus and I
Chapters (19)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. PRAISE
  3. TITLE PAGE
  4. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  5. DEDICATION
  6. CONTENTS
  7. ONE
  8. CROSSING ISTHMUS
  9. THE OCTOPUS INCIDENT
  10. TWO
  11. A SEAL’S TAKE
  12. THE MULTI-COLOURED KNITTED KNOCKERS
  13. NO BIRD IS ONLY AN I
  14. THREE
  15. I AM SHE
  16. SPUN AIR
  17. THE OCTOPUS AND I
  18. NOTES AND REFERENCES
  19. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It’s so beautiful. The octopus is so attentive to them: her eggs, her tapestry of swaying pearls. She won’t abandon them. The little seal would love to have shown him—to have shown her friend how the octopus cares for her young. And then they could have played tug-of-war on the octopus’s stretchy body.

But of course, he’s not there. She doesn’t know where he is. So, for now, the little seal thinks, it’s just her and me: the octopus and I.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Scott’s account of the octopuses crossing the isthmus at Eaglehawk Neck on page 60 is inspired by an anecdote recounted in Richard Bennett, Jill Mure and George Mure’s The Photographer, the Cook and the Fisherman: Real Stories of Tasmanian Fishing, Richard Bennett, Jill and George Mure, Hobart, 2002, p. 177.

Scott’s story on page 62 about being spooked by an octopus while abalone diving is heavily inspired by an encounter described in Milfred Knight’s Abalone Diving in Tasmanian Waters: The Men, the Boats and the Island Coastline, Milfred Knight, Hobart, 1985, pp. 45–46.

The information about octopuses that Lucy reads to Jem and his family on pages 62–63 is from Richard Schweid’s Octopus, Reaktion Books, London, 2014, pp. 21–24.

The information about octopus neurons and suckers on pages 71–72 is drawn from Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, Atria Books, New York, 2015, p. 14.

On page 309 Lucy reads an article about scientists sequencing an octopus genome; the quotes she reads are from neurobiologist and octopus researcher Clifton Ragsdale, and it is published in Joshua A. Krisch’s ‘Scientists Have Sequenced the First Octopus Genome’, Vocativ, 12 August 2015, http://www.vocativ.com/220961/octopus-genome/index.html, accessed 4 March 2018.

On page 310 Lucy reads another article, about an octopus’s interactive touch. This quote is drawn from Natalie Angier’s ‘At Love and Play Under the Sea in an Octopus’s Garden’, New York Times, 11 August 1998. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/11/science/at-love-and-play-under-the-sea-in-an-octopus-s-garden.html, accessed 4 March 2018. Her mention of an octopus’s capacity to see with its skin comes from the finding reported in M. Desmond Ramirez and Todd H. Oakley, ‘Eye-Independent, Light-Activated Chromatophore Expansion (LACE) and Expression of Phototransduction Genes in the Skin of Octopus Bimaculoides’, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 218, 2015, pp. 1513–1520.

Lucy’s reference on page 310 to an octopus’s ability to learn vicariously comes from the findings reported in Graziano Fiorito and Pietro Scotto’s ‘Observational Learning in Octopus vulgaris’, Science, vol. 256, no. 6056, April 1992, pp. 545–547. Her mention of octopus displays of favouritism is written about extensively in Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, pp. 8–13.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am immensely grateful to so many people who supported and encouraged me in innumerable ways whilst I wrote this novel, and who helped me bring it into being.