What is it like to be an octopus? No, really be an octopus?

Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of science and scuba diver who uses the strange intelligence of octopuses as an entry into evolution, consciousness, and the meeting of minds across a gulf of time and space. Octopuses are legendary in aquarium circles for being avid tricksters, squirting people with jets of water, and breaking out of their tanks to eat fish in the middle of the night before stopping home. Yet for all their intelligence, they are poorly understood animals. Why are they so intelligent, and how does their unusual neural architecture support consciousness.

The last ancestor between all of chordates and mollusks was some kind of flatworm that lived over 600 millions years ago, with a few neurons and light sensitive patches. And while vertebrates evolved densely networked brains, octopuses and their relatives have a 'ladder' neural architecture, with each tentacle possessing nearly as many neurons as the central brain. Cuttlefish, those seemingly deep and serene minds, send images sparkling across their skin in ever changing patterns.

In the end, we are left with more questions than answers. But it surely wonderous that we share our planet with such a strange aquatic intelligence.