The Psychedelic Octopus
Is the Octopus Sentient or…Alien?
Octopuses have fascinated me since childhood, and they’re my favorite creatures to watch. Over a decade ago, my octopus fascination kicked into high gear, coinciding with a pop culture surge in octopus popularity. I read books, and watched videos and documentaries about the aloof and enchanting cephalopod. Since then, I’m convinced that the octopus is the most psychedelic animal on the planet, thanks to a bevy of unusual traits, sentience, and possible alien origins.
The Octopus- Aquamarine Enchantment
Spend time watching an octopus and it’s hard not to feel ensnared by its mesmerizing gaze. Make no mistake about it, when an octopus looks you in the eye, it knows, that you know, that it knows. The octopus hypnotizes. The ancient sea sage puts a spell on you, as the soothing waves of calm and tranquility rinse away stress and fear.
The octopus, whether frozen in timeless inertia or gliding underwater with outlandish grace, never takes its eye off of you. The octopus eyes beckon you to behold its mind manifesting beauty on display, as you slide into a subaquatic dream state.
Lulled into a trance of oceanic boundlessness, the creature fascinates more and more. Countless animals have an unusual feature or two. However, does any animal on Earth have more atypical features than the octopus?
Unusual Features of the Octopus
Learning about the physical and physiological traits of the octopus has to make you wonder, who, or what, created such truth and beauty.
The octopus has 8 tentacles, or arms, of course.
The octopus uses the suckers on tentacles to identify and taste food, thus each sucker functions like a tongue.
The octopus regenerates tentacles, its nervous systems and parts of its eye.
Besides a central nervous system, each octopus tentacle has a “mini-brain” that allows each tentacle to function independent of the others, enabling faster reaction time and whip cracking reflexes. The tentacles function as a decentralized, and independent operating system.
In essence, an octopus has nine brains. Don’t underestimate the main brain of an octopus. “The brain-to-body ratio for an octopus is the largest for any invertebrate, and they have around the same number of neurons as a dog.” 1
The octopus boasts creepy levels of intelligence. The octopus can unscrew a lid off a jar and knows how to use tools. The octopus uses shells as weapons, and sometimes as shields. If unable to find a seashell or coconut shell to hide or live in, they construct shelters. The octopus even builds homes out of flip flops.
To maintain peak performance, the octopus has 3 hearts and blue blood containing copper-rich haemocyanin, to carry maximum oxygen.
The octopus would make the perfect ninja and CIA agent. The cunning octopus excels at camouflage, hiding, and deception. The octopus adapts its color and texture to its environment. Better yet, the octopus doesn’t even have to touch anything. The octopus detects light reflections and adjusts its appearance as needed.
Despite being colorblind, there’s evidence the octopus distinguishes colors via chromatic aberration and its pupil shape.
Octopuses tweak the RNA in their brains to adjust to warmer and cooler waters. The octopus edits its RNA, without changing its DNA, and we don’t know why.
Although some live longer, some shorter, most octopuses live for 6 months to 5 years.
The octopus endures a cruel, twisted fate of inevitable sadism and masochism, highlighting their sex lives. After mating, the female octopus often engages in sexual cannibalism and eats the male octopus. However, the female octopus sacrifices herself for the greater good too. In a weird process known as semelparity, after laying her eggs and guarding them until they hatch, the female octopus stops eating, begins to waste away, and ensures her own death. The ultimate self-sacrifice improves protection of the precious eggs, and increases survival chances of the babies.
The majority of octopuses are nocturnal, they have a notorious reputation for eluding capture, and the evasive, escape savants make Harry Houdini blush.
The octopus possesses an extraordinary ability to escape through any opening that is larger than its beak. The beak is used to break, crack open and eat mollusks and crabs. The octopus is an invertebrate, without a backbone, thus allowing the octopus to contort and squeeze its soft, boneless body through almost any nook, cranny or crevice. Thus an octopus with a soccer ball sized head can escape through a quarter sized hole or smaller. Nightmare fuel anyone?
The octopus’ bizarre array of biological traits make a perfect complement to potential sentience.
The Octopus is a Sentient Being?
A sentient being is believed to be capable of experiencing pain, pleasure, and other feelings. A global consensus mounts, favoring octopus sentience. In fact, in 2021, the U.K. government declared the octopus a sentient being. A year later, the BBC investigated octopus sentience with an article titled, “The mysterious inner life of the octopus.”
Without a doubt, the Netflix, hit documentary, My Octopus Teacher, propelled the octopus to sentient fame. Released in 2020, the story documents an unusual, yearlong friendship between a man and an octopus in a South African kelp forest. Since being uploaded 4 years ago, the trailer alone on YouTube has nearly 5 million views. The psychedelic cephalopod captivates us with wonder and awe.
On occasion, an octopus even waves back. “Octopuses seem to react to anesthetic drugs and will avoid settings where they likely experienced past pain.” But to feel, and resonate with the magical, perhaps even mystical, nature of the octopus, no book tells a better tale than 2016’s, The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery.
The book shares a tender, tear-jerking story about a profound friendship between human and octopus. The account shares poignant examples of unique octopus behavior. They love to be tricksters and squirt people with their water jets. There’s a good chance octopuses can distinguish people by tasting you with their suckers. Above all, you come to understand why an aquarium staff must escape-proof the building with meticulous care and detail.
Where there’s an octopus will, there’s an octopus way. Except that one time I caught an octopus.
My Octopus Encounter
I was 16, and on a family vacation in Marathon, Florida. I was snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico, and somehow caught an octopus with a fishing net. I didn’t realize what an amazing, aquatic feat this was. I even managed to transfer the octopus to an empty cooler filled with sea water.
The octopus fascinated me to no end, despite its temporary incarceration. It was on the smaller side, and slid around the cooler trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I stood above the octopus and observed its weird ways. Why it didn’t just climb up the cooler wall and flee the scene of the crime?
After a while, I gave the octopus a gentle prod with the fishing net handle. I don’t know what I expected. I still had the stupid, and unfounded idea that the octopus was dangerous, and would suck my face off or something.
In an instant, the octopus squirted its ink and scared the hell out of me. All the water in the cooler turned black as a cave and I couldn’t see the octopus. The octopus blew my mind, and seeing that I had hopes to be a marine biologist, I wasted no time releasing the octopus back into the ocean.
A few years later in 1996, while watching The X-Files, a new subplot rolled out about a parasitic, alien entity called “Black Ink” that could invade and control human bodies. I never messed with an octopus again, and now wonder if the octopus is alien.
Is the Octopus an Alien?
Back in 2015, Clifton Ragsdale, associate professor in Neurobiology and Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, published a paper about the octopus genome. After publishing the paper, Ragsdale raised eyebrows saying:
The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving capabilities. The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.
So of course the media jumped all over the word “alien.” This topic has enjoyed feverish debate ever since. Now that the debate dust has settled, here’s the best way to think about alien octopuses.
As far as we know, they’re not alien in the literal sense. In fact, the octopus and humans share a common ancestor, going back 750 million years ago- a miserable flatworm. However, given that an octopus boasts over 33,000 protein coding genes, and we mere humans have just 20,000 protein coding genes, claiming the octopus is an alien species isn’t total bat shit crazy.
Nevertheless, the octopus is an “alien” narrative churns on because it makes for juicy headlines and irresistible click bait. But on second thought, how do we know we’re not aliens? We’re the only conscious creature on Earth, right? Well, if the octopus is sentient, maybe that’s not correct. Perhaps if humans and octopuses are both conscious, we’re both aliens.
Octopuses, Neuroscience and Psychedelics
The University of Chicago appears to have an octopus obsession, even though you won’t find one in Lake Michigan. Of course Ragsdale teaches there, then in 2022, the university published an octopus article. The article highlights the work of Dr. Melina Hale, who is a professor of Neuroscience Institute, and sits on the committees of computational neuroscience and neurobiology. Keep in mind Ragsdale is a neurobiologist too.
Scientists from quite similar academic backgrounds are studying the same phenomenon from unique angles. Whether octopuses or psychedelics, they’re all studying consciousness. People like Robin Carhart-Harris and Andrew Gallimore are a couple of neuroscientists and neurobiologists studying psychedelics.
I see a consciousness renaissance happening, and a psychedelic revival downstream.
What fires up my curiosity the most is the collision between empiricism/evolution and mysticism/metaphysics. What if octopuses did in fact evolve and are aliens at the same time?
DMT as Divine Influx Sparking Life & Consciousness?
No one knows if an octopus produces DMT, as it hasn’t been studied. However, since DMT has been found in human brains, rat brains, along with the Sonoran Desert toad’s own version, a DMT producing octopus isn’t far fetched.
People are quick to shoot down the alien octopus idea. At the same time, 750 million years later, it’s still not easy seeing how the octopus evolved into an advanced, intelligent, sentient creature. What was the spark that stimulated such progression? Did the octopus experience a divine influx? Did the octopus find a way to induce endogenous DMT uptake? Or did an “alien” hack the octopus and breathe sentience into it by way of DMT?
In this context, evolution fits in quite well. Maybe the missing link isn’t a humanoid, a creature, or a mammal. Perhaps the missing link is an event, a divine influx, a jolt of DMT that accelerates flora and fauna on Earth into novel levels of being and consciousness.
Hell, us humans are so full of ourselves, we won’t even admit that we don’t know how we became conscious. Who knows, maybe the octopus is an “alien” entity. Octopuses love to make mischief and be tricksters. How did Andrew Gallimore describe “entities”? He said they’re “tricksters” or “trixy.”
Going Out on a Tentacle
For the record, I don’t eat octopus for obvious reasons. Although I’m a hypocrite because I love my meat. My dearest apologies to cows, pigs and chickens. The effortless charm, natural curiosity, cleverness, complex behavior and problem solving skills of an octopus are irresistible.
The elegance, sophistication, and intelligence of these psychedelic masters of subterfuge and escape inspire true wonder about the origins of life on Earth. But nothing sparks more awe than when eye to eye with an octopus and you feel you’re under aquatic hypnosis. What was the divine influx that gifted octopuses with their innate and uncanny ability to connect with humans on an emotional level?
Maybe it wasn’t a divine influx. Maybe it wasn’t evolution. Maybe it was both. Remember what Terrence McKenna said:
It's this thing, is what it seems to be. It's a galactic intelligence. It's a billion years old. It's touched 10 million worlds. It knows the history of 150,000 civilizations. It's beyond the possibility of your conceiving it.
I’m not going to lie. If the octopus is a form of galactic intelligence, and has lived 10 billion years, and knows 150,000 civilizations, then H.P. Lovecraft’s horrific stories about Cthulhu and the Elder Ones, should make us all stop eating and farming octopus this very instant.
This factoid comes from the website of Northrop Grumman, a military-industrial complex company. Northrop Grumman studies the octopus for various applications.