In 1910, one attaches itself to a schooner off the coast of Camano Island and wraps one tentacle around the captain’s leg, nearly pulling him into the sea before the men on board, in a battle that lasts half an hour, sever two tentacles. ![]() An octopus, now, is something to be feared and conquered. They’re described as “ugly sea monsters,” after yet another confrontation, accompanied by this advice: “To get rid of them, once they have taken hold of anything, it is necessary to cut them into mincemeat.” Gone is Captain Peabody’s language of wonder. The octopuses’ reputation continues to sink. A blow from an oar soon put the beast out of trouble.” The animal, the Times reports, “attempted to haul the fisherman overboard by grasping his leg with one of its arms. Three months later, another fisherman beats the record when he catches an octopus nearly 40 feet long from tip to tip. In January 1906 The Seattle Times chimes, “Largest devilfish” (then a colloquial term for octopuses) “ever captured on the Sound hauled out near Port Madison by a fisherman.” Its longest arm measures 18 feet. The octopus, still alive, sticks two tentacles inside the boat and simultaneously grasps some kelp below, nearly turning the boat over and sending six people into the water, a fate they escape by bludgeoning and stabbing the 200-pound animal to death.Īfter that the archives reveal locals agog at-and terrified of-the eight-limbed creatures in their midst. ![]() While crabbing a mile from camp, a member of the party at the bow of the boat spears an octopus between the eyes, either on a whim or as a defensive measure (the accounts vary). In September 1903, four years after Captain Peabody’s encounter, campers on Vancouver Island return to Seattle and share a harrowing tale that previews the tone of human-octopus relations throughout the early twentieth century. He orders the Willscott in for a closer look. But the sight of this enormous octopus stuns him. He’s an avid reader of history, especially of Captain Cook’s Pacific voyages, and of literature, like Victor Hugo’s “A Struggle with a Devil-Fish,” so he’s long imagined confronting a giant sea beast. In his nearly 50 years, many of them at sea, he’s witnessed a lot two decades earlier he survived a burning vessel and later narrowly escaped with his wife and daughter the shipwreck of the New York in Half Moon Bay. The second, larger object the captain will later describe as a “monster.” Through the glass they see one is a sunfish, bigger than a kitchen stove, thrashing in the water. The men make out two objects and reach for the telescope. O n May 18, 1899, captain Thomas Peabody is manning the Willscott, a 267-foot sailship bound for British Columbia, when, at 2:30pm, several hundred miles northwest of San Francisco, a crew member calls his attention to commotion in the water. He names her Gaia, the personification of earth in Greek myth, and over the next six weeks he gets to know her as well as a human can know a creature with no spine, no bones even, and nine brains-one in the head and one in each of its eight limbs. Despite the evolutionary distance-the last common ancestor of humans and octopuses lived half a billion years ago-he senses a strange kinship, that this specimen is as curious about him as he is of her. ![]() Tidying up the darkened lab for the evening, he realizes he’s being watched. Every time someone walks into the lab, the octopus swims in that direction, checking the person out.Īs night falls after a day of diving, transporting the octopus, and securing the tank (octopuses are notorious escape artists), Dominic’s exhausted. Dominic, a behavioral neuroscience PhD candidate, will come to identify this burst as a manifestation of her insatiable curiosity. About five feet long from arm tip to arm tip, the female octopus has reverted to her default color, a ruddy auburn, and she’s swimming with abandon. ![]() Once released into a lab tank, the animal goes electric with activity, like someone’s flipped a switch.
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