IN DEFENSE OF OCTOPUSES 291 



of animals is termed, have missed the status of brainy intelli- 

 gence, of which man is the highest criterion, only by a very 

 narrow margin. There is reason to believe that they are the 

 most keen-witted creatures in the ocean and had they developed 

 an opposable thumb and fingers instead of suckers with which 

 to manipulate various objects the entire course of the earth's 

 existence might have been altered. 



There are some very curious similarities between the de- 

 velopment of intelligence in man and in the modern cephalo- 

 pode. Both acquired brains after their individual fashions 

 because the course of organic evolution left them without ade- 

 quate physical protection against the vicissitudes of nature. 

 Alan, the weak and the puny, without claws and rending fangs 

 to battle the beasts and without long legs with which to flee, 

 had to acquire cunning or perish. That marvelous addition, the 

 opposable thumb, made possible holding and using tools and 

 gave a stimulus to cunning that nothing else in the mechanics 

 of evolution could have provided. The thumb is by far the 

 most remarkable portion of man's anatomy. Literature, music, 

 art, philosophy, religion, civilization itself are directly the re- 

 sult of man's possession of this digit. 



Like man, the modern cephalopods have been thrown upon 

 the world naked and without the armor protection of their 

 ancestors. For cephalopods are shellfish, blood brothers to the 

 oyster, the clam and the conch; they are mollusks which have 

 been deprived of their shells. The only present day cephalo- 

 pods which still retain their shells are the Nautiloids which are 

 direct descendents of the ancient types whose fossils are found 

 in the tightly compressed rocks of the Upper Cambrian. Over 

 three thousand fossil nautiloids^ have been named, an imposing 

 group ranging in size from a tiny seven millimeter creature 

 called Cyrtoceras to the immense 14 foot cone of Endoceras! 

 Only four closely related species of this mighty shelled host 



