Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cuttlefi sh and octopuses are the world's most expert shape-shifters. We
have lost that ability, but our remote ancestors and theirs were shape-shifters
too. They underwent changes in shape as they evolved in the Precambrian
seas, and it was those alterations that set us on our dif erent paths. And now
we are on the verge of recreating and understanding such changes.
As I hovered in the magic world of Lembeh another question occurred
to me.
If we and other vertebrates were to go extinct, leaving the fi eld open for
octopuses, could these organisms too develop culture and science? Could an
intelligent and daring octopus eventually propose a theory of natural selec-
tion? And perhaps other octopuses, of ended by the presumptuous scientist's
attack on the octopus god that created them, would exclaim: “Nonsense! We
could not possibly be descended from that ugly
Wiwaxia
creature!”
