More about the octopus

In The Soul of the Octopus, Sy Montgomery told us amazing things about this eight-legged, nine-brained sea creature. Now in Secrets of the Octopus, she tells us more — and shows us lots of pictures besides.

Montgomery is a skilled nature writer who, in her long career has written about many different animals, including cheetahs, tigers, hummingbirds, pigs, apes and hawks. Yet none of them amazed her the way the octopus has. Even after two books (actually three, for she also wrote a children's book), one wonders if she is through talking about them.

There are so many incredible things about octopuses. Though they lack bones, they can walk bipedally. They can change color in an instant to blend in with their surroundings. Some can take the form of various fish and other sea creatures to fool predators. Many of them are cannibals, usually the female eating the male after mating. They can solve puzzles, open jars and escape through impossibly small holes. Not only do they have personalities, but each of their legs may have a different personality.

They are incredibly smart. And they live brief lives, some of them less than a year. And so, not only can they in some ways rival human intelligence, they can do so in less time than it takes a human child to learn to talk.

Octopuses come in many different breeds and many different colors. Most live solitary lives, unusual for intelligent creatures, yet other breeds live in communities. Some octopuses are smaller than a human hand, while others are larger than a human being. Usually the bigger they are, the longer they live.

This is a National Geographic book, so you know the photographs are of high quality. It is a relatively short book, even with so many pages of photos, but it is loaded with information about one of nature's most unusual creatures.