Octopus farming is the ultimate expression of our disconnect with nature

We can not think about these uncanny creatures as something than different as a result of, as latest research have proven, octopuses are evolutionarily separate from us, having had the temerity to department off into an order of their very own 560 million years in the past. The concept of their being farmed in some set up speaks precisely to that sense of disconnection from us, in morphology, house and time. Some discover octopuses scrumptious, others repulsive, others chic. To rear them beneath our management, slightly than permitting them safety beneath a stone on the sea mattress, is a remaining primordial offence, it appears; as if we had snatched our personal antediluvian origins and stuffed them in a goldfish bowl, previous to battering and frying them. 

From whales to shrimps, all sea creatures undergo this sense of our hegemony, our hierarchy, our dominion, by advantage of their hubris in deciding to not share our landbound exile. We punish them with captivity and consumption. We devour them into our consuming society. We peg them out on strains to dry like a lot slimy washing. We ask them to select the winners of soccer tournaments, or we poke our fingers at them in the aquarium. They look again, pondering at our unthinking. 

In her guide, The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery attests to the truth captive octopuses in the New England Aquarium in Boston can not bear the stink of some people. They particularly dislike people who smoke, whose tarry residue the cephalopods can style with their arms. While octopuses sit in judgement at our follies, we watch them in a state of confusion. We can not admit any rivals, irrespective of what number of additional legs they might possess. 

[see also: Watching Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher, I wonder why we like to imagine animals are our friends]