Our last common ancestor with an octopus was a flattened worm about six hundred million years back, which makes them the closest thing to meeting an intelligent alien on this planet. Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher and a scuba diver, and he spent years at a site off Australia where octopuses gather. What he describes: Skin that sees color while the eyes are colorblind, most of the neurons out in the arms so each one partly thinks for itself, animals that recognize individual people and squirt the ones they dislike. And a two-year lifespan, which is the sad puzzle at the center — all that mind, gone in a season.
Other Minds