Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land-all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. “In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness The rats’ dreams took place in an area of the brain known to be involved with memory, further supporting a notion that one function of dreams is to help an animal remember what it has learned.” The researchers repeatedly saw the exact same patterns reproduced while the rats slept-so clearly that they could tell what point in the maze the rat was dreaming about, and whether the animal was running or walking in the dream. Neurons in the brain fire in distinctive patterns while a rat in a maze performs particular tasks. MIT researchers now know not only that rats dream, but what they dream about. But any pet owner who has heard her dog woof or seen his cat twitch during sleep knows that is not true. He believed that during a dream, the awakened soul may see the future, “an award of joy or sorrow drawing near.” So it’s no wonder that humans were quick to reserve dreams for people alone researchers for many years claimed dreams were a property of “higher” minds.

Pindar of Thebes, the Greek lyric poet, suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake.

The soul of an octopus by sy montgomery