The octopus. "...his big-hooded eye followed me, a single five-foot-long arm reached out ... the arm inched up past my wrist ... it suckers ... like cold kisses ...tasted ... by tens of thousands of chemoreceptors. I couldn't help feeling as if I were being studied, that a measured intellignece lay behind that intent eye and exploring arm."
The octopus is a big-brained invertebrate - cognitive, behavioral, and affective. These are mollusks - but what creatures. Psycholgist Jenifer Mather studied an octopus vulgaris snatch some crabs, drag them back to a crevasse, cover the entrance with rocks, eat the crabs, and takes a siesta. They solve mazes, learn, remember. The brain wraps about the espophagus. They only spend 7% of their time hunting, and the rest of the time is engaged in recreation and communicating with others of their species.
"Through the Eye of the Octopus", Eric Scigliano, Discover, 2003, pp. 47 ff.
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