[S]peculative fiction author Ray Nayler published “The Mountain in the Sea,” his first novel, depicting a not-too-distant future in which humankind is faced with an awe-inspiring (and deeply disquieting) possibility: that our singular perch atop the evolutionary ladder may not be quite so singular after all. In the novel, a newly discovered community of hyper-intelligent octopuses off the coast of Vietnam developed its own advanced language and the ability to use complex tools.
While Nayler’s story is wholly fictional, it is not without basis in a very real school of zoological thought, one which holds that octopuses are indeed unique within the animal kingdom as we understand it today.
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‘Filling an ecological niche in a post-human world’
While an octopus-dominated future may seem “improbable” at the moment, it “wouldn’t be the first time that an ocean-dwelling species took advantage of a land species extinction to adapt and evolve,” Popular Mechanics said.
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