Can human beings finally admit that it’s not just the world’s “huddled masses” who yearn to breathe free, but also all variety of creatures that humans keep in captivity, in cages or aquariums nowhere near the size of their natural habitat?
It was hard not to cheer at the news last week that Inky the octopus escaped his tank at the National Aquarium of New Zealand, made his way across the floor, and down a 164-foot drainpipe until he plopped back into the Pacific Ocean. Way to go, Inky! Octopuses are extremely intelligent, strong and flexible, scientists say, and very curious. Most experts believe that Inky was merely exploring, rather than consciously trying to escape. But chalking up the whole octopus escape as an “accident” seems to underestimate their intelligence and instincts. Maybe Inky wasn’t consciously thinking, “I must escape this tiny, unnatural tank where people stare at me all day,” but perhaps he was operating more on an innate drive (like birds flying south) to return to his natural habitat, in this case, the open waters of the ocean. And if octopuses are as curious as they say, and why wouldn’t they be, perhaps boredom was enough motivation for Inky to escape the first chance he got.
In fact, octopuses are known as escape artists, Sy Montgomery, author of “The Soul of an Octopus” told USA Today. He said the solitary creatures don’t escape because they are lonely, but because they are curious.
“It doesn’t mean that Inky was unhappy where he was,” Montgomery said. “Astronauts don’t go into outer space because they don’t like Earth, they just want to see what else is out there.”
Odd that someone who wrote a book called “The Soul of an Octpus” would argue that Inky wasn’t “unhappy where he was.” For a curious creature, or even a not-so-curious one, a tank is no substitute for the ocean. And the octopus-astronaut comparison is silly. Astronauts get to choose to go into outer space, and then they get to come back. An octopus in an aquarium isn’t there by choice; as curious as they are, they never asked to be taken from their habitat so they could explore a tank.
Studies have shown that creatures as small as rats and crows and as big as elephants and whales are capable of feeling empathy for their fellow creatures. Every year a different study comes out about a different animal, and the conclusion is always the same. So could we do some healthy extrapolating and exercise our human empathy, and assume that all the earth’s creatures yearn to live freely in their natural habitats, and do, in fact, become bored, and much worse, when kept in captivity?
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