Local octopus expert part of Oscar winning documentary
By Herald on April 29, 2021.
Craig Foster interacts with an octopus in a scene from the Academy Award winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher.” The University of Lethbridge’s Jennifer Mather had a role as a scientific advisor for the production. (Netflix via AP)Al Beeber – Lethbridge Herald
She didn’t win the Oscar herself but Jennifer Mather can still celebrate after serving as scientific advisor on the Academy Award winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” now showing on Netflix.
Mather is a psychology professor and octopus expert who was originally contacted by the BBC which wanted her expertise on footage shot of an octopus.
She was then asked by the BBC if South African filmmaker Craig Foster could contact her about a film he was doing about a year he spent with a wild octopus in the Great African Seaforest on the southwest tip of Africa.
The film, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, documents the time Foster spent developing a relationship with the female octopus in the kelp forest.
The film was 10 years in the making and shows how Foster met a curious young octopus and began documenting his contact with her.
Foster contacted Mather and after a discussion asked if she could come to Cape Town to verify that what he was saying about octopuses in his film was indeed accurate.
“Of course I could,” she said she told him. “He’s a fabulous photographer,” she said Thursday.
Mather borrowed some of Foster’s photos to use in a study about octopuses in camouflage.
Mather, now 77, grew up in Victoria B.C. and spent as much time as she could as a child in the intertidal zone, which is described as the area where ocean meets land between high and low tides.
“I decided to study sea animals when I grew up,” said Mather, adding she wanted to study the whole animal, not just DNA and other separate elements and ended up at the University of British Columbia where she graduated in 1964 with a B.A. in Biology. She also earned a M.Sc in Biology from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Brandeis University..
Mather’s role in the film, she feels, was a minor one and she’s surprised by the phone calls she’s been getting since the film won an Oscar Sunday.
“It was exciting but I don’t feel I contributed an awful lot. I’m delighted they wanted to make sure it was authentic,” said Mather who has taught at the U of L for 35 years.
Octopuses are very intelligent animals, said Mather. And while intelligence has long been associated with social long-living animals “octopuses are basically solitary. They don’t particularly like each other,” she said.
They also only live around one-and-a-half years. One smaller type lives about six months.
“Why are they intelligent when they aren’t long-lived? The answer is the environment. They have to think quick and learn fast.”
At their end of their lifespan, octopuses breed and die. Each female, says Mather, produces tens of thousands of eggs which end up floating along the ocean with some eventually setting back to the seafloor. Their mortality rate is immense but for them to survive, 10 of those thousands of eggs from one mother need to reach maturity and two or three need to breed, said Mather.
Part of her interest in octopuses is determining whether they have consciousness but she says “you’re never going to prove it. The only way you know what an animal is thinking is if they tell you,” said.
Her work with sea animals has given her the opportunity to collaborate with others around the world. Right now she is working with three other women from various parts of the globe on a research project and has a potential project in New York. Her work has taken her to such locations as Bermuda, Hawaii and the Caribbean as well as South Africa where filmmaker Foster is involved with a foundation to saving the oceans.
“I’m constantly learning about animal behaviour.”
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22-21
“My Octopus Teacher” was an amazing documentary. I watched it with utter fascination. I shed a few tears at the end.
looking forward to watching – the abuse certain humans heap upon intelligent creatures (on any creatures is unacceptable) like these is spirit crushing. what kind of an ass can enjoy eating a creature’s parts hacked off of it whilst alive, so that they wriggle and writhe on their plate?