Quotes from Sy Montgomery

In the Devonian the moon was 10,000 miles closer, and summoned surging tides that flung fish onto tidal flats, daring them to walk.

Gr-EEN! YEL-low! OR-ange!" Griffin cries in quick succession. He's just naming random colors—all except the right one. Except, of course, his words aren't really chosen at random. "You notice he always says the name of a color," Arlene points out. "He understands the category.

The Old Way: A Story of the First People

I get them—especially Girindra's, since he mails them from Jamespur—their words are usually six to eight weeks old. While I read their words, I can't even know for sure that the writers are still alive.

My ears are screaming as Rob gives the thumbs-up sign that it's time to surface. I ascend with him slowly, like a dying soul reluctant to leave its body, and we watch the silver trail of our babbles rising above us like shooting stars.

Together the pigeons and doves make up the family Columbidae, with three hundred species, from doves smaller than sparrows to the Victoria crowned pigeon, the size of a turkey.)

The affection the aquarists felt for the octopus appeared to be mutual. For the hours that they swam together, though the massive octopus could have easily escaped them, the Dude chose instead to keep his human friends by his side. Only when their tanks ran low on air did the divers reluctantly bid the Dude--the best giant Pacific octopus in the world, wrote one--goodbye.

But what is the soul? Some say it is the self, the I that inhabits the body; without the soul, the body is like a lightbulb with no electricity. But it is more than the engine of life, say others; it is what gives life meaning and purpose. Soul is the fingerprint of God.

Octopuses appear to enjoy watching Many home aquarists report that their octopuses appear to enjoy watching television with them. They particularly like sports and cartoons, with lots of movement and color....King and her coauthor, Colin Dunlop, even suggest placing the tank in the same room as the TV, so owner and octopus can enjoy programs together.

Her father left school to join the navy in World War II and worked as a tool grinder and machine specialist at a knitting factory for twenty years—till it was bought by outsiders who closed it down. He lost his pension.

Some villagers understand science simply as a different system of belief. "If you did not believe in science, how would you fly in an airplane?" one elderly fisherman asked me thoughtfully. "Without belief in science, the airplane would fall down.

Wilson has to leave early. He got the call earlier this morning: there is a bed for his wife in a nearby hospice. If she is going to take it, she must move today. The doctors still don't understand what is wrong with her, only that her self and her strength are ebbing away, and there seems no stopping it. Wilson's afternoon will be spent getting his wife, with whom he's traveled the world, ready for her final journey.

anemones, if unmolested by predators or stricken with disease, can theoretically live almost forever; scientists note that they do not appear to show signs of aging.

Just about every animal," Scott says—not just mammals and birds—" can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy." Once you find the right way to work with an animal, be it an octopus or an anaconda, together, you can accomplish what even Saint Francis might have considered a miracle.

As he did with the electric eels, Scott is trying to figure out a way to induce the toads to show themselves. How? "You need to get within the mind of the toad," he says.

Caught in the feathers, air gives birds their warmth and their flight; in hummingbirds, air even gives them their color. Their jewel-like radiance—emerald, ruby, amethyst—comes not from pigment, as in most birds' feathers, but from air.

Isn't this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you?

But no guard would accompany us; because of public anger over the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya, a national strike day had been declared, and no one was working.

Even in the wake of tragedy, we could not have felt more amazed had we been visited by an angel that Christmas morning. When the angel met the shepherds in Bethlehem, the shepherds were sore afraid. When I was a child, that phrase had always seemed odd to me...but now that I have thought more deeply about these words of scripture, it seems to me that the angels must have been more like our Christmas weasel: glorious in purity, strength, and holy perfection.

Mollusk expert Pierre Denys de Montfort's iconic pen-and-wash drawing of 1801 shows a giant octopus rising from the ocean, its arms twisting in great loops all the way to the top of a schooner's three masts.

So, if an octopus is this smart, Steve asked Bill, what other animals are out there that could be this smart--that we don't think of as being sentient and having personality and memories and all these things?

You are 50 percent less likely to see a bumblebee than you were in 1974. Butterfly populations have decreased, according to one estimate, by 33 percent in the last twenty years. Three billion birds have disappeared from North American skies in the past five decades. Audubon's Birds and Climate Change Report warns that half of all birds on our continent are at risk

Slime doesn't wreck anything, I explained to Jody. After all, I reminded her, Slime is part of the two greatest pleasurable experiences known to humankind. She thought for a moment. What's the other one? she asked. Eating, I replied.

Bears are meant for long lives. . . . they can live more than 30 years. Such a long lifespan testifies to the value of knowledge carefully accumulated and considered.