– I Kathimerini (excerpts), Athens –
In our world there are very serious, suffocating and priority problems – wars, famines and disasters – but I want to write to you today urgently about something that may seem completely insignificant and irrelevant: why I stopped eating octopus.
Octopuses, you see, are completely paradoxical creatures. It is as if they were the result of another evolutionary process, independent of that of the rest of the sea creatures. Although they are related to cephalopods, they are unlike any other kind of life. We know that they have lived on our planet for hundreds of millions of years – possibly as many as 500 million years – but no one knows exactly how many, because they are invertebrates and there are no no fossils.
We also know that they are almost evolutionarily perfect: they remain unchanged, and they have survived all the recent mass extinctions that the various life forms on our planet have suffered. When the meteorite fell on the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs and 75% of the species that lived on Earth disappeared. The octopuses were there. They stayed there, and are still there.
They are incredible and strange creatures, with unique characteristics. Their blood is blue, they have three hearts, and each arm has a separate brain. They have the largest brains of all invertebrates (and most vertebrates). Their skin has the ability to see, and they can modify their RNA [ce qui leur permet de créer de nouvelles protéines].
inexplicably brilliant
And above all: the octopuses are brilliant. Unreasonably, inexplicably brilliant. They have different, distinct personalities. They use tools. They have memory (of two kinds). They recognize – and distinguish – human faces. If you put them in a jar, they find a way to unscrew the lid from the inside to escape. There are tales of octopuses jumping onto fishing boats and entering the hold to eat crabs.
As you can see, it is impossible for me to read and learn this while continuing to live.