Imagine meeting a creature that feels both familiar and alien — one that observes you as intently as you do it. When marine biologist Danna Staaf first locked eyes with an octopus at age 10, she was spellbound. This creature, with its shape-shifting body and expressive gaze, sparked a lifelong fascination with cephalopods, the group of marine beings that includes octopuses, squid and their relatives.

Years later, Staaf has dedicated her career to exploring their secrets. She went on to earn a doctoral degree in biology from Stanford University, where she studied baby squid, and authored “The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives: A Natural History of Cephalopods,” “Monarchs of the Sea,” “The Lady and the Octopus” and “Nursery Earth.” In this conversation with Bioneers, Staaf shares insights on how her early encounter shaped her work and discusses the captivating characteristics of cephalopods that continue to motivate her research and writing. 

Bioneers: We read that you first became interested in octopuses around age 10. What fascinated you about these creatures initially, and what compels you to continue studying cephalopods as an adult?

Danna Staaf: I grew up in L.A., and my family did a road trip where we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, among other places. I saw a live octopus in person for the first time, and it made such a huge impression on me. It was and continues to be this incredible combination of the familiar and the alien. This is an animal with two eyes that are very sophisticated. Like ours, they’re image-forming, and they take in what’s around them, so when you look at an octopus, it looks back at you. They are animals that demonstrate curiosity and behavioral responses to their environment. We know that they’re capable of seeing and recognizing humans, so when it looks at you, it’s like meeting somebody. But at the same time, those eyes and that brain have a totally different evolutionary history. They’re embedded in this body that is the result of that history — that has no bones, almost no structure. It’s completely malleable, both in skin color and texture and the shape of the body itself. I think it hits that sweet point of being relatable and different, and things have stayed that way for me ever since. They keep being interesting the more researchers study and discover about them. 

I saw a live octopus in person for the first time, and it made such a huge impression on me. It was and continues to be this incredible combination of the familiar and the alien.

For instance, when I was a kid and first started reading about them, octopuses were understood as solitary creatures. I kept a pet octopus, and we only put one in the tank because it was thought they’d eat each other. Then in the intervening years, there have been these incredible discoveries of social octopus behavior in the wild. There’s a place that got called Octopolis off the coast of Australia, where there’s a group of octopuses living in close quarters, and they have a social dynamic with different roles and relationships with one another. Then on the other side of the world, off the coast of Panama, there’s a different species of octopus that’s been found to actually share dens as a mated pair, which is unheard of. They mate without cannibalizing each other. They just keep being amazing, and so I keep reading and writing about them.

Bioneers: Your latest book is “The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives: A Natural History of Cephalopods.” Is there an aspect about the lives of octopuses that you feel particularly demonstrates their intelligence?

Staaf: For me, that tends to come back to their capacity to learn, which I think is the most admirable and useful. Like with humans, the skill is not any innate talent or intelligence, but our ability to try new things, to learn about our environment and to adapt to a new environment. We know octopuses make spatial maps of their environment so they can navigate around. They can adapt to new prey items and new environments. They can learn from day to day what’s available. They’ll learn in captivity to identify different people and distinguish between them based on their behavior and the interactions they have. There was a great example of this learning in a recent documentary called “Secrets of the Octopus,” which follows biologist Alex Schnell as she dives and follows different octopuses around. There’s one octopus in particular that she spends a lot of time with underwater, until it’s acclimated to her presence and just goes about its daily life. She saw it hunting with other species. Octopuses will, in some cases, actually form these collaborative hunting partnerships where fish will point out food to them, and they’ll use their arms to flush it out from under rocks. Dr. Schnell wondered if the octopus would pick up signals from her. And it did. So this human, a weird-looking underwater diver, pointed out where prey was, and the octopus understood. 

Octopuses are easier to study because they’re benthic, so they walk around mostly on the sea floor, they keep a den. You can give them a puzzle or a maze to solve. But a squid that swims in the open ocean needs a lot of space. They may have a lot of the same skills, but it’s harder to study their intelligence. 

I want to mention that I often talk about octopuses because they are, in some ways, the cephalopods that are most like us and the easiest to study. Their relatives — squid, cuttlefish and even nautiluses — have some abilities to learn as well, but they’re more difficult to study. Octopuses are easier to study because they’re benthic, so they walk around mostly on the sea floor, they keep a den. You can give them a puzzle or a maze to solve. But a squid that swims in the open ocean needs a lot of space. They may have a lot of the same skills, but it’s harder to study their intelligence. 

Bioneers: Your book “Monarchs of the Sea” explores the 500-million-year history of cephalopods. How has the evolution of these ancient species shaped the ecosystems we see today in our oceans?

Staaf: It’s hard to get our mind around how long their ancestors have been around — it’s twice as long as dinosaurs. So when Stegosaurus and Diplodocus were walking around on land, there were ancestors of octopuses and squid in the ocean. And even before there was anything on land, when there were no animals on land at all, there were ancestors of octopuses and squid in the ocean. It’s really fascinating to think about how long they’ve been present and changing, evolving, adapting. They didn’t look like the modern giant Pacific octopus. And over and over again, they’ve become present right at the center of ocean ecosystems. They’re not usually the biggest animals around, and they’re definitely not the smallest animals around. The way their bodies and presence have evolved puts them right in the middle. 

It’s hard to get our mind around how long their ancestors have been around — it’s twice as long as dinosaurs.

For the most part, they’re generalist predators, and so they’ll eat most things smaller than them — little fish, shrimp, crabs and each other. They’re also a really great food source for anything bigger than them. Larger cephalopods, larger fish, sea birds, marine mammals and marine reptiles all eat them, so they’re literally at the center of the food web. They’re taking in all this energy from the smaller stuff and packaging it for the bigger stuff. Though many things are eating them, they’re able to sustain that and not go extinct because they also have, on average, a really fast life cycle and quick generational turnover. Many species grow up to maturity in less than a year. They make lots of babies, thousands or tens of thousands, so it really fuels and shapes the ecosystem. For instance, sperm whales, the biggest toothed whales on the planet, live almost exclusively off squid. We don’t see a lot of giant squid; they don’t live in a place where we spend a lot of time and tend to only wash up on shore after they’re sick or dying, but scientists have calculated that there are masses of giant squid in the ocean because they’re what’s sustaining all of the sperm whales. 

Bioneers: You’ve also written fiction and created art that features octopuses, squid and other cephalopods. What gap do you hope your creative pursuits bridge between marine biology and the public? What motivates you? 

Staaf: One is an intrinsic motivation based on my own amazement in cephalopods. But I also need to share it — if I think it’s amazing or funny or would make other people happy, I want to share it. I think there are a lot of people who think they’re not really a science person or don’t find science really interesting, who might not gravitate to a shelf of science books at a library. I think that can be for a lot of reasons. Maybe they never really had a science teacher who connected with them growing up, or they just had to memorize facts without ever getting that sense of wonder. Science itself, as amazing as I think it is, isn’t always a universal draw. People think they like science or they don’t like science. But I think telling stories or drawing comics tend to have broad appeal. Everybody likes to laugh, everybody likes a good story. Those are very deep human interests, and in my experience, science is full of stories and jokes. It’s just as universal, but it’s not always presented or learned that way. 

Everybody likes to laugh, everybody likes a good story. Those are very deep human interests, and in my experience, science is full of stories and jokes. It’s just as universal, but it’s not always presented or learned that way. 

I volunteer as a science teacher and do a lot of outreach in schools. I always tell kids, you are already a scientist. It’s not something you have to memorize a bunch of facts to become. It’s not something you have to train to become. You don’t even have to memorize one single scientific method, because science follows a lot of methods. It’s all about curiosity and making observations, which we’re all great at from the time we’re born. We’re always noticing what’s around us and learning from it. We’re taking in all this information, and we develop hypotheses about how things work way before we learn the word hypothesis. When I make comics or write fiction inspired by science, my goal is to embrace my nerdiness and not ever hide that, but also to show people that they can be part of everything. 

Bioneers: What’s on the horizon for you? Any ongoing or upcoming projects you’d like to share about?

Staaf: I just signed a contract with Greystone to write and illustrate a children’s book, which I’m very excited about. It’s about this deep evolutionary history — like a dinosaur book for kids but with cephalopods instead of dinosaurs, and hopefully playing off all those same natural interests that we have towards ancient life, extinctions and what used to be. I’m having a lot of fun doing deep dives into the research, so I can really paint for the young reader, say, what it would be like to scuba dive in the Jurassic or the Permian and see these early life forms.