Craig Foster, who won an Academy Award for his film “My Octopus Teacher,” wrote a lovely op-ed yesterday in the New York Times about how an octopus stole his camera.
Foster writes, “I had been filming creatures living in the Great African Sea Forest off the coast of South Africa about a year ago when my camera was grabbed straight out of my hands by a young octopus thief. Wrapping her arms around her bounty, she zoomed backward across the ocean floor.”
Foster shares how octopus apparently like to steal shiny things and he has found in their “dens” things like “earrings, bracelets, spark plugs, sunglasses and a toy car with a revolving cylinder that the octopus spun round and round with its suckers.”
Then a remarkable thing happened, notes Foster, the octopus “turned around and began to film my diving partner and me.” You’ll find an example of these photos at on-emotions.com.
Foster shares how the photos the octopus took – he retrieved his camera – had a “profound” affect on him. How so? “After many years filming octopuses and hundreds of other animals that call the Sea Forest home, for the first time I was seeing the world — and myself — from her perspective.”
Foster wrote this article as a meditation for Earth Day and as an invitation for us to see the world from nature’s perspective. In other words, how might a burst of daffodils, a hawk, a dolphin, see us and the world? Can you imagine? Are you curious?
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