Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sy Montgomery Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 42 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Sy Montgomery.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Pinterest Share on Linkedin

Famous Quotes By Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1203345

Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2246085

The fact that three-fifths of an octopus' neurons are not in their brain, but in their arms, suggests that each arm has a mind of its own. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 423850

Go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that. I wish for you the insight to recognize the blessings as such, and sometimes it's hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It's your job to recognize them. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1612345

The word compassion means "with suffering." To have compassion is to willingly join in suffering - to show those you love that you will not let them suffer — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1661712

As with a child, to commune with Athena demands a level of openness and intuition greater than that used in the usual discourse between adult humans of a common culture. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 235452

The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shamans and seekers eat mushrooms, drink potions, lick toads, inhale smoke, and snort snuff to transport their minds to realms they cannot normally experience. (Humans are not alone in this endeavor; species from elephants to monkeys purposely eat fermented fruit to get drunk; dolphins were recently discovered sharing a certain toxic puffer fish, gently passing it from one cetacean snout to another, as people would pass a joint, after which the dolphins seem to enter a trancelike state.) — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1401141

Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes - one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a "series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin following cold-water immersion." During this reflexive response, "blood pressure, heart rate, and the workload of the heart all increase, making the heart more susceptible to life-threatening rhythms and heart attack. Simultaneously," an online text explained, "gasping begins, followed by rapid and deep breathing. These reflexes can quickly lead to accidental inhalation of water and drowning. This rapid and seemingly uncontrollable over-breathing creates a sensation of suffocation and contributes to feelings of panic. It can also create dizziness, confusion, disorientation, and a decreased level of consciousness. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 973723

Anthropomorphism is such an interesting concept. It means projecting human thoughts and emotions onto an animal. Which implies that thoughts and feelings belong to humans alone. Of course, if you believe in evolution, or if you believe in the Bible, that's not so. Both evolution and the Bible tell us that we're part of a family. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1479490

When I would visit my octopus friend, Octavia, at New England aquarium, usually she would look me in the face, flow right over to see me, and flush red with emotion when she took my arms in hers. Often when I'd stroke her she'd turn white beneath my touch, the colour of a relaxed octopus. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1475906

Watching a pig eat is the ultimate vicarious thrill. Seldom can you take such pleasure in another's joy. Here is someone following his bliss. Pigs are quite literally made for eating - they were bred to eat and get fat fast. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1389532

Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed; but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. Although we couldn't have been more different - I, a terrestrial vertebrate constrained by joints and bound to air; she, a marine mollusk with not a single bone, who breathed water - she was clearly as curious about me as I was about her. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1548854

We split from our common ancestor with the octopus half a billion years ago. And yet, you can make friends with an octopus. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1619645

I never met a pig I didn't like. All pigs are intelligent, emotional, and sensitive souls. They all love company. They all crave contact and comfort. Pigs have a delightful sense of mischief; most of them seem to enjoy a good joke and appreciate music. And that is something you would certainly never suspect from your relationship with a pork chop. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1635016

at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium found a banana peel on the floor in front of the Shale Reef exhibit at 3 a.m. On closer inspection, the banana peel turned out to be a healthy, fist-size red octopus. The security officer followed the wet slime trail and replaced the octopus in the exhibit it had come from. But here's the shocking part: The aquarium didn't know it had a red octopus living in its Shale Reef exhibit. Apparently the octopus hitchhiked there as a juvenile, attached to a rock or sponge added to the exhibit, and grew up at the aquarium without anyone knowing it was there. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1637667

Experiments at Seattle aquarium prove that octopuses can tell individual humans apart - even when the people are dressed identically - just by looking up at them through the water. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1747131

But Christopher obeyed a higher calling: the intoxicating call of green grass and sunshine, the sweet scent of the earth on one of the last days of summer. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1816555

Always somewhere there is fire or smoke, insistent reminders of the greed consuming the world — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1887883

They don't want to hear how Octavia is different from us. They want to know how we're the same. They know what it's like to have an itch. They can imagine what it's like to be a mother. This brief encounter has changed them. Now they can identify with an octopus. They — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1997794

Laos is saddled with the distinction of one superlative: it is the most heavily bombed country on earth. During the nine-year secret war against the Communists, during the Vietnam War, the U. S. dropped 6,300,000 tons of bombs on Indochina, about 1/3 of which fell on Laos. It was the heaviest aerial bombardment in the history of warfare. During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. rained more bombs on Laos than were dropped on Nazi Germany during World War II -- three times the tonnage dropped during the Korean War -- the equivalent of a plane load of bombs every 8 minutes around the clock for 9 years. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2023821

The sight of a slender young woman sitting in the anaconda exhibit with a 13-foot-long, predatory reptile snuggling in her lap, the tip of a tail coiled lovingly around one leg, provided dramatic evidence of what Scott and Wilson already knew: "Just about every animal," Scott says - not just mammals and birds - "can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy." Once — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2033057

The self," Blackmore writes, "is just a fleeting impression that arises with each experience and fades away again. . . . There is no inner self," she argues, "only multiple parallel processes that give rise to a benign inner delusion - a useful fiction." She argues that consciousness itself is a fiction. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2188277

Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2201175

If you took the monsters' point of view, everything they did made perfect sense. The trick was learning to think like a monster. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 2267380

I wonder: Can a brainless animal feel curiosity? Does it want to play? Or does it only "want" toys or food the way a plant "wants" the sun? Does a sea star experience consciousness? If it does, what does consciousness feel like to a sea star? Clearly, I have entered a world I cannot — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 797479

The purpose of fear, clearly, is to help you get away - which it does. If your heart rate increases, there is more blood pumping so you can use that blood to fuel your muscles to run away. Oxygen is sent to the lungs so you can run fast. Pupils dilating help you see in the dark. All of that prepares your body to fight or escape. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 259673

There is another important difference as well. Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one - which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 275188

I think all animals have souls. I feel certain that if we have souls, octopuses have souls, too. If you grant something a soul, it demands a certain level of sacredness. Look around us. The world is holy. It is full of souls. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 309035

To get to know someone so different from myself as an octopus, and to know that the individual recognised me and even enjoyed my company, was an enormous privilege. The octopuses I came to know were strong but gentle, and the suction of their suckers tasting my skin pulled me like an alien's kiss. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 331431

There was a tank of special flounder about fifteen feet away from the octopus tank," he said. The fish were part of a study. But to the researchers' dismay, the flounder started disappearing, one by one. One day they caught the culprit red-handed. The octopus had been slipping out of her tank and eating the flounder! When the octopus was discovered, Scott said, "she gave a guilty, sideways look and slithered away. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 373723

For more than a year and a half, since meeting Athena, since coming to know Octavia and now Kali, each time I've reached into the tanks where we have brought these creatures into our world, I've longed to enter theirs. At last, in the warm embrace of the sea, breathing underwater, surrounded by the octopus's liquid world, my breath rising in silver bubbles like a song of praise, here I am. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 393059

Normally a prolonged stare from a gorilla is a threat. But Digit's gaze bore no aggression. He seemed to say: I know. Dian would later write that she believed Digit understood she was sick. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 423477

Human relationships with predators have always been thorny. Predators are the first creatures our kind purposely eradicates. Too often, people feel humans are and should be in control; we are enraged to discover this is not true. And when other creatures share our appetites and kill our livestock (often animals we were raising to kill, ourselves), we call them vandals and murderers ... Predators are the most persecuted creatures on Earth. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 782863

I had nixed the idea of having children when I was myself a child, having learned in the 1960s that human overpopulation was literally crowding other species off the planet. Why create another mouth to gnaw at the overburdened earth? — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1453831

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? — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 814216

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it! — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 821882

I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 823657

It was not that I disliked people; some of them were interesting and kind. But even the nice ones were no more compelling or important to me than other creatures. Then, as now, to me humans are but one species among billions of other equally vivid and thrilling lives. I was never drawn to other children simply because they were human. Humans seemed to me a rather bullying species, and I was on the side of the underdog. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 907113

In all religions, as in all legal systems. people find ways to skirt the rules. We obey the letter of the law without honoring its spirit, and then reassure ourselves of our righteousness. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1075734

Assessing the mind of a creature this alien demands that we be extraordinary flexible in our own thinking. Marine biologist James Wood suggests our hubris gets in our way. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1078550

Volumes of history written in the ancient alphabet of G and C, A and T. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1178244

Just about every animal," Scott says - not just mammals and birds - "can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy. — Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery Quotes 1327255

I have thought for a long time that one day, if I finally got to deserve it, I would love to write about the minds of invertebrates. — Sy Montgomery