I’m not a vegetarian, but recent events have made me think that we severely take our animal brethren for granted. First, I edited an article by Dan Hoffman for our Mysterious Ways June/July issue, all about how the latest scientific studies have proven that different species are capable of love—not just for their own kind, but for other creatures of the animal kingdom.
Then, I read this week all about Inky, an octopus in a New Zealand aquarium who decided he’d had enough of captivity and figured out how to escape his tank, shimmy down a drainage pipe and haul himself back home to the ocean deep.
I didn’t eat octopus before—yuck—but I certainly won’t do it now. Forget Free Willy, “Free Inky” is a tale that tugs on my heartstrings.
While the internet is busy making Inky the Octopus memes, I think it’s a good time to consider how we relate to the creatures who share this planet with us. Inky’s story is actually a good example of the power we have over the lives that, the Bible tells us, were placed in our care.
According to The Washington Post, Inky was “taken in after being caught in a crayfish pot, his body scarred and his arms injured.” Hurt by man, then rescued by man.
According to a staff member at the aquarium, Inky was still getting used to his new home, and they were having trouble keeping Inky from getting bored. It seems the staff didn’t realize that Inky was healed and ready to go—so Inky, perhaps with a little help from above, took matters into his own tentacles.
The Post article highlights a number of ways octopi have demonstrated their creativity and unique personalities. One purposely flooded the viewing area of an aquarium in Santa Monica, either seeking to expand his habitat or wreak havoc on his caretakers. Another took apart a miniature submarine like it was made out of Legos. Another even left its tank to eat a fish… and snuck back before anyone knew what had happened.
Then there’s Paul the octopus, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to choose the winners of World Cup soccer matches, picking food from one of two boxes that displayed the competing nations’ flags. It foresaw eight straight wins for Germany—a prediction that came to pass.
After Paul’s death in 2010, Germany’s biggest paper, Der Spiegel, ran an obituary for him. “Attempts to find a scientific explanation for Paul’s choices have come to nothing. A Russian biologist, Vyacheslav Bisikov, suggested that he might have been attracted to boxes that displayed flags made up of stripes. But that doesn’t explain how he distinguished between two boxes with striped flags, such as Spain and the Netherlands. Besides, octopuses are believed to be color blind, which precludes the explanation that he picked the brightest flags.”
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If these ugly creatures from the depths of the sea can move us with their human-like behaviors—and in Paul’s case, supernatural ones—then perhaps it’s a sign we should think more about how we treat any “lesser species.” I’m not saying we should all go meatless… but if it’s true we’ve all been given the capacity for love, we should show it more often, especially to the beings we so often ignore—the slimy and the ugly among them.
As the great naturalist John Muir once wrote:
“Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit–the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes.”
So remember Inky next time you’re tempted to tap on the glass at an aquarium or when you shoo away that deer from eating your backyard garden. Love thy neighbor… even if he’s got eight arms.
Has a member of the animal kingdom ever seemed “human” to you? How did it change the way you thought about animals? Share your stories with us.
