My love affair with octopuses began when I was 9. On a summer holiday by the sea, I found Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973) in my great-aunt’s bookcase.

Written by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the great pioneer of scuba diving, and his colleague Philippe Diolé, the book told of encounters between humans and cephalopods—the group that includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and their more distant cousins, the nautiluses. A few days after I’d finished reading, I was out snorkeling and saw my first wild octopus.

It was clambering over rocks in the shallows, changing color as it went. I was so excited that, after it vanished into a crevice, I leaped out of the water and began telling two strangers on the shore everything I’d learned from the book... read more»