In light of Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards, Mikołaj Golachowski—a biologist who also has a fondness for cephalopods—writes about the cleverest animal in the ocean (and not only there).

I’m getting the impression that recently my life has been teeming with octopuses—or at least with thoughts about these cephalopods. Although as far as I can recall I’ve only had personal contact with them once, many years ago, when one caught my flipper. I don’t know if it wanted to devour me heroically (the flipper was about three times its size, not to mention the rest of me), or invite me to inspect its lair, or just check what the flipper was made of, but I had the feeling that contact had been initiated, and not by me. Of course, I’d like to pass over the few encounters of a culinary nature—also from many years ago—because I’m still ashamed of them. It’s awkward to eat someone potentially more intelligent than yourself, or, really, anyone at all.

We’ve known about the cephalopods’ uncanny intelligence