The reaching tentacle in a research gesture represents an emotional openness to other human and non-human entities. It is a curiosity about the other, a fuller experience. It is a feeling that overcomes the fear of injury, the fear of an unpleasant sensation associated with what is strange and foreign. The paw is wounded but not dangerously; nevertheless, it wants to explore, understand, touch, and experience with its entire being. To be wounded means to feel, to be sensitive.

I refer to the concept of "tentacularity" coined by Donna Haraway, attempting to grasp perception from a perspective other than anthropocentric. Tentacularity shifts the emphasis to touch, knowledge through feeling, touching, exploring, tasting, thinking by touch, characteristic of many invertebrates. Human knowledge through sight seems distant in this context, while touch is associated with a certain unveiling, trust, a willingness to absorb with one's entire self.