According to Dr. Barbara J. King, professor emerita of anthropology at the College of William & Mary and author of “How Animals Grieve” (and other books on animals), nearly two dozen blue-lined octopuses living off Australia’s Stradbroke Island suffered a [grim] fate.
She described “this more recent experiment in which 21 wild octopuses going about their daily lives were collected from their homes in coastal waters and in the laboratory killed so their brains could be studied,” King told Salon by email.
“Justifying this cost (death of 21 animals) by saying that an ‘animal ethics permit’ was obtained in no way alters my opinion that this is unethical and immoral research: what right do we have to end the life of 21 octopuses for this experiment?” King argued. “Would we do this to 21 chimpanzees?”
King is not the only scientist comparing octopuses to chimpanzees. Both animals have displayed extreme intelligence, so much so that last month the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) rocked the science world with an arguably overdue announcement: Cephalopods like octopuses and squids could receive the same protections in laboratory settings currently given to mice and monkeys. The agency has put out a request for information, seeking more information from the scientific community on how to proceed.
