Octopuses can taste the things they touch.

Imagine if we could do that.

Would you want to?

They also live only long enough to mate. The males grow old and die shortly after mating and the females attach their eggs to rocks in a crevice and then spend almost half a year guarding the eggs, cleaning them, while slowing starving themselves. They die soon after their eggs hatch.

What if humans did this?

How different would our society be?

Writing exercise:

Give your fictional characters (in a story, poem, or novel) octopus characteristics of your choice and see how that might change them.

Or find another animal you identify with, research some things about it that you didn’t know before, and give those characteristics to one of your characters.

(This is an example of magical realism writing inspired by nature.)