A fascinating glimpse into an alien consciousness.
Naturalist Montgomery (Birdology, 2010, etc.) chronicles her extraordinary experience bonding with three octopuses housed in the New England Aquarium and the small group of people who became devoted to them.
As a casual visitor to the aquarium, she had been intrigued by the sense that the octopuses, invertebrates separated from us by millions of years on the tree of life, she watched were also watching her. “Was it possible,” she writes, “to reach another mind on the other side of the divide?” Their appendages are covered with “dexterous, grasping suckers” that propel food into mouths located in their armpits, and they savor the taste of food as it travels along their skin. This ability is one of the ways in which they perceive their environment. On her first behind-the-scenes visit to the aquarium, Montgomery was given the opportunity to directly interact with Athena, a 2 1/2-year-old, 40-pound octopus housed in a 560-gallon tank. Hosted by the aquarium's director of public relations, with other personnel on standby to ensure her safety, the author was encouraged to place her hand in the tank. Though Athena possessed the strength to pull Montgomery into the tank, she was gentle and even playful. The author describes the thrill of this and subsequent encounters with Athena and two other octopuses housed at the aquarium. They recognized and openly welcomed her visits, soliciting petting and stroking as might a house pet in similar circumstances. Octopuses seemingly relate easily to humans, quickly learning to pick up cues from their keepers, who make a game of hiding food, and in turn play tricks on them. Yet in the wild, they are generally solitary and may attack and eat others of their species if placed in the same tank. With apparent delight, Montgomery puts readers inside the world of these amazing creatures.
A fascinating glimpse into an alien consciousness.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9771-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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PERSPECTIVES
Whale-watching episodes from Gilders (an employee of British Petroleum), embellished with forays onto terra firma but dampened by misguided wading into the treacherous waters of poetry. Whales do figure in this book, though less than the title might suggest. Three whale-watching voyages frame the narrative, but Gilders is happy when she has any creature in her sight—be it blue whale or kelp fly—and whale-watching can be awfully slow business. She's a namer—look!, an orange-crowned warbler, or a blue-tailed skink. She just plain likes to experience one slice of nature or another, commune with it for a while, and take off for the next encounter. You can't exactly say that Gilders is lost in the details, for the details are what her book is all about. It's at its best as a diary of a naturalist's days afield: errant, lambent, near certifiable in its obsession. Her moments with the leviathans are unremarkable. They cavort, they sound, they come for a good scratch behind the ear. Yes, but check out that sally light- tailed crab and there—sweet Matilda!—a blue-footed booby. This is all charming enough until Gilders gets stiff and marmish while discussing evolution, and her attempts at lyricism also fall short: On a lazy day ``we drifted along the beach, our minds and thoughts blown in different directions'' (that must have been painful); Baja California is ``a beautiful jewel set between two azure seas''; and giant cardon cacti are rumored to ``stand like sentinels.'' Gilders's biggest mistake is to quote extensively from John Steinbeck. There's a strong temptation to go pull one of his titles from the bookshelf and abandon the book in hand altogether. (8 pages b&w photos, 4 pages color photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-253-32572-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
From the vast mangrove swamp of Sundarbans on the Bay of Bengal, a tantalizing glimpse of the shifting boundary between nature and myth. Hidden among the labyrinthine channels and dense jungle foliage of Sundarbans lives a unique population of tigers. Unlike their cousins in other lands, who avoid humans, these tigers inexplicably hunt and eat people, hundreds every year, choosing their prey from the fishermen, woodcutters, and honey-gatherers who venture into the mangroves. Nature writer Montgomery (Walking with the Great Apes, 1991) traveled to India and Bangladesh to explore the relationship between the deadly cats who are ``worshiped but not loved, feared but not hated'' and the people who must live with the possibility of becoming their next meal. Here, she says, is a place whose human inhabitants have never forgotten that they are ``made of meat.'' Everyone respects Daksin Ray, the tiger god, and no one questions the supernatural acts attributed to the tigers. Montgomery writes lyrically of an alien land where outlines blur, tree roots reach for the sky, cyclones claim whole villages, and chanted mantras keep tigers from becoming angry. It's evocative, but intensely frustrating. Montgomery speaks no Bengali; her guide in Sundarbans spoke almost no English. She taped her interviews and had them translated months later—not exactly conducive to incisive questioning. She sighted a tiger only once, as it slipped from the river into the impenetrable curtain of trees. Instead of a portrait of the mysterious animals, we get a picture of the obstacles in the path of the curious Westerner. Montgomery tries to couch this imprecise investigation in terms of Eastern mysticism: Fact is subjective, there is no one answer. But it feels a lot like fuzzy journalism. Montgomery has found an alluring subject that, like the tigers, eludes her searching gaze.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-64169-1
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
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