Watching Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher, I wonder why we like to imagine animals are our friends
Must we see something of ourselves in animals – read our emotions into their behaviour, attribute to them a level of human-like intelligence – to value them?
Craig Foster, the film-maker, plays the part of the student in the beautifully made My Octopus Teacher.
The boundaries between her and I seem to dissolve, just the pure magnificence of her” – so says a man of the octopus sitting on his chest. “All I could do at the time was just think of her.” Many men could do worse than appropriate these words for their human partners.