39 pages • 1 hour read
Sy MontgomeryThe Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Karma: Choice, Destiny, and Love”
On the first Wednesday after Kali’s death, Montgomery visits the aquarium as usual and meets Bill at Octavia’s tank. They hug “long and hard” (180) but don’t speak of Kali right away. They talk about almost every other animal in the vicinity until Wilson appears, bearing Kali’s necropsy report. She was healthy in every way when she died. They speculate why she didn’t just crawl back into another tank of water once she became affected by the open air; there was one in the room and her suckers surely could have detected it. It may have been that the mat in front of her tank, treated with a chemical disinfectant to prevent visitors from transmitting disease to her tank, proved toxic to the sensitive mucous on her skin.
Shortly after New Year’s, the octopus Bill ordered to replace Kali arrives at the airport, and Montgomery goes with aquarium staff to pick it up. This one is also a female, and has lost part of an arm, probably in a fight with a predator. Bill names her Karma because her arrival was fated after Kali died. She’s slightly larger than Kali was when she first arrived, and is probably about nine or 10 months old. She is gentle and beautiful, and Wilson is instantly taken with her. However, she tries to bite another volunteer, and Montgomery wonders about the behavioral choices animals make.
On Valentine’s Day, Montgomery travels to the Seattle Aquarium for their annual octopus mating event. Officially called the “Octopus Blind Date,” it’s a huge draw for the aquarium and a fun educational event for everyone in attendance, from schoolchildren to adults. An announcer introduces the two octopuses, who are kept separate by a barrier until the appointed time. At noon, the male and female are allowed to meet, and they soon touch arms before the male completely covers the female. They stop moving, looking almost like a single octopus, and stay this way for almost five hours before they part in one quick motion.
Back in Boston, Montgomery updates the goings on at the aquarium. That March, the renovation is coming together, as almost all the glass panels for the new Great Ocean Tank are set up and the coral sculptures are all in place. Changes are taking place in the lives of Montgomery’s friends too. Christa is planning to save up to rent an apartment for herself and her brother Danny to live in while she works at the aquarium and takes classes toward her master’s degree. Marion announces her engagement to her boyfriend, and Anna celebrates her 17th birthday among friends at the aquarium to take her mind off the fact that it is the first birthday she will not celebrate with her best friend.
Chapter 7 Analysis
Throughout the book, Montgomery juxtaposes the environment in an octopus’s natural habitat with that found in an aquarium. Most of Montgomery’s observations, of course, come from the latter. It’s clear from her excitement about diving in the ocean, though, that she considers this the epitome for serious octopus watchers. In Chapter 7, she addresses this issue in discussing the journey of the new octopus, Karma, from the open waters of the Pacific Northwest to the New England Aquarium. She talks to Ken Wong, the supplier who caught and shipped Karma, to learn what is involved. The issue arises of the ethics of removing an octopus from its habitat to a confined aquarium tank: “They’re ambassadors from the wild,” Ken says (188). He thinks it’s important for people to see and learn about them, or else they would have no interest in protecting them. At a reputable, accredited aquarium, octopuses live good lives—certainly longer than they would in the wild.
The life cycle of octopuses is also examined in depth here when Montgomery travels to the Seattle Aquarium for its “Octopus Blind Date” event. This serves several purposes. First, it shows that life is always shifting, ending and being regenerated. Sandwiched between Kali’s death in Chapter 6 and Octavia’s death in Chapter 8, the detailed account of the mating process here is a reminder that birth and death are equally natural in the life cycle. In this sense, it also provides context to the story of Octavia’s eggs: She laid unfertilized eggs, which the narrative presented as just suddenly existing, but the description of mating at the Seattle Aquarium gives the background to how eggs are produced in the wild.
Finally, both the issue of choosing mates and Karma’s varying reactions to different people lead Montgomery to examine the causes of animals’ behavior. Researchers have shown that while instinct may play a role, it is not determinative. Studies with fruit flies have shown a certain kind of movement in most cases, following a pattern of what is called the Lévy distribution. This is an efficient search method for finding food that has been observed in other animals. Fruit flies also exhibit individual behavior, even when genetically identical. Thus, their actions cannot be entirely driven by DNA. Montgomery writes, “Though the question remains one of the great philosophical debates of history, if free will does exist, research suggests it exists across species” (191).
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