The Lady and the Octopus

The Lady and the Octopus book cover — CONTENT S INTRODUCTION 4 THE MYSTERY OF THE ARGONAUTS CHAPTER ONE 10 THE SEAMSTRESS CHAPTER TWO 23 THE EXPLORER CHAPTER THREE 41 THE INVENTOR CHAPTER FOUR 58 THE DETECTIVE CHAPTER FIVE 78 THE REPORTER CHAPTER SIX 94 THE LUMINARY EPILOGUE 110 MARINE BIOLOGY TODAY AND TOMORROW Author's Note 116 Timeline 118 Glossary 123 Source Notes 125 Bibliography 129 Index 133

The Lady and the Octopus — page 1 — INTRODUCTION ΤΗ Ε MYSTERY OF THE ARGONAUTS Sleeve rolled up arms dripping seawater Jeanne Villepreux Power holds the most beautiful seashell she's ever seen and tries to break it The translucent pearly material flexes under her fingers Several long arms reach out of the shell and wrap their suckered lengths around Jeanne's hands She adjusts her grip not wanting to hurt the octopus who lives inside She tries a new angle applying more pressure until finally crack A large piece of shell comes off in her hand leaving a jagged gap in the once perfect spiral 4

The Lady and the Octopus — page 2 — Jeanne leans over the side of her boat to put the broken shell and octopus back into an underwater wooden enclosure that she designed The sky and the Mediterranean Sea are both clear and warm and Jeanne settles in to watch the octopus with the broken shell She takes notes and sketches as her small craft bobs gently in the waves just off the Italian island of Sicily surrounded by the cries of seagulls and fishermen It is 1833 and she is a working scientist trying to solve an ancient puzzle The octopus too is hard at work She is fixing her shell Of course octopuses are famously squishy they have no bones no teeth no scales and usually no shells Their only hard part is the beak they use to eat As long as that beak can fit through a crack or under a rock the rest of the octopus's body can squeeze along with it But this kind of octopus is different She is called an argonaut and she lives in a delicate coiled shell For thousands of years people have wondered how the argonaut gets her shell Does she steal it like a hermit crab or grow it like a snail Jeanne intends to find out A young female argonaut floats near the water's surface clinging to the inside of her shell with the suckers on her arms Learning to pronounce names from languages not our own can take some effort but it's an important way to show respect to people both living and dead After all none of us like to hear our name mispronounced Scientists before Jeanne have guessed and argued about the answer to this question based on their studies of dead argonauts But Jeanne wants to study these animals while they are still alive Such an undertaking is not as easy as bringing a live tortoise or weasel like pine marten into her house which Jeanne has also done Octopuses are aquatic so Jeanne has had to design special underwater homes to keep them alive while she observes them She began with glass aquariums and then developed wooden cages that could be anchored to the seafloor Nothing like this existed before There are no public aquariums no fish tanks in doctors waiting rooms In 1833 doctors all make house calls anyway Jeanne Villepreux Power sounds close to ZHEN VEEL prooh POW er THE MYSTERY OF THE ARGONAUTS As Jeanne watches the octopus mending her shell she might feel a twinge of sympathy Like the octopus 5

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