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Over the past few years, I've spent many hours 

 — the smart, sassy behavior of octopuses.


 These cephalopods, who telegraph their moods by color changes and solve problems by using tools, have surprised me again and again.


 And now it's happened again. An octopus has astonished me.

 This time, it's a common octopus caught on camera in South African waters by a dive team for the documentary 

, currently airing on BBC America in the United States.

 seizes the octopus. Just as the situation begins to look dire, the octopus stuffs the shark's gills shut using its sinuous arms, making it impossible for the shark to breathe — until the shark releases it.


 That's cool and calm escape-artistry. But then, the same octopus is threatened again! David Attenborough narrates, praising its "superior wits."
 

The Ultimate Octopus Disguise | Planet Earth: Blue Planet II | Saturdays @ 9/8c on BBC America


 "Superior wits" indeed! The octopus's self-adornment with shells is a thoughtful, fast fix -- one that may have saved its life a second time. Kathryn Jeffs, the producer for this episode, titled "


 Gloomy octopuses (that's a taxonomic term, not a mood descriptor) in Australian waters even 

 of clams and scallops -- their former meals -- and shape them into dens.
 
 Yet not everyone responds to news like this of octopus ingenuity in the same way.
 

 for Slate, Daniel Engber suggests that cephalopod enthusiasts vastly overrate the octopus. Octopuses use "simple motor programs" to move around, he notes, and often are slow to learn experimental tasks given them by scientists.


 "Rampant octophilia," Engber says, is about what we want to see in an animal that has come, faddishly in the past few years, to charm us.


 Octopuses have so "disappointed" Engber, in fact, that he has taken up eating them again after a long hiatus. His piece is illustrated with the image of an octopus carrying a little sign that reads "Eat Me."

 earlier this week -- in a piece written before I came across Engber's -- the impulse to take each new discovery of animal intelligence and rank it against other animals' intelligence is an impulse to avoid: "What if, instead, we just drank in each new discovery, scrutinizing it (because that is what science does) and welcoming it as a way to revel in the fullness of the natural and cultural world?"


 Dismissal of other animals' lifeways as "disappointing," I want to make very clear, is not scientific scrutiny. It's not scientific at all.


 So, today, I offer a few alternative ways to think about these amazing cephalopods.
 



 Aiming to use our big brains compassionately, we might look hard not only at the 

, including here in the U.S., of eating living breathing octopus (see short video clip 

) — but also at the practice of eating any octopus at all.
 In sum, I proudly own my "rampant octophilia."

 If, like me, you're on Team Cephalopod, I hope you'll own yours, too.
 


Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara's new book is 

Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat

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Barbara J. King

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Evidence for smart, sassy octopus behavior once again impresses our resident cephalopod fan Barbara J. King, who is standing up for octopuses against a recent broadside.

Calling Team Cephalopod: Why octopuses could never disappoint

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