Perhaps the most unknown members of the cephalopods, a group that has octopuses, squid and nautilus among its rows, cuttlefish much remains to be demonstrated. Recently, a crew of six common cuttlefish (Official sepia) did just that, focusing his sinusoidal pupils and his 48 collective arms and 12 tentacles on the task of delayed satisfaction before eating, for the most delicious meal.
The cuttlefish test was the project of an international team of researchers seeking to investigate the intelligence of cephalopods, a field less explored than similar lines of research for mammalian and bird species. The team’s investigation was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Animal cognition has been the subject of human intrigue at least since Darwin sent shock waves establishing an evolutionary connection between humanity and primates. Since then, scientists have tried to better understand the limits and scope of animal cognition, especially in the work of Ivan Pavlov and his dogs or BF Skinner and his rats. But recent researchers have gone beyond classical conditioning issues and focused on the ability of dogs to do so. keep whole word banks for your toys or pigs inclination to play video games.
“Our understanding of why self-control evolved has always been based on evolutionary pressures that are relevant to long-lived social species,” Alexandra Schnell, a comparative psychologist at Cambridge University, said in an email. main author of the recent article. . “Cuttlefish have not experienced the same pressures.”
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In the case of the last six teenage cuttlefish who participated in the study (Mica, Pinto, Demi, Franklin, Jebidiah and Rogelio, as they left two other cuttlefish), the task was to choose between a piece of raw prawn available immediately or waiting for the possibility of being offered a live grass shrimp to eat, the latter being the most coveted food. The team that studied them found it after training, some cuttlefish they could wait up to two minutes to get the best reward, showing that they understood the two implications of staying a while before taking action. Especially patient cuttlefish were also quite reflective when they changed the terms of the exercise. When the food reward track changed, cephalopod patients adapted more quickly.
Cuttlefish are not as social as humans or chimpanzees, as the latter species tend to live in groups that help pierce certain principles of self-control for the good of the whole group. As a result, it was not certain whether the animals would be so reluctant to eat free food.
“This finding is an extreme example of convergent evolution,” Schnell said. “Cuttlefish have significantly different evolutionary histories from those of the most commonly studied apes, corvids, and parrots, but they have the same cognitive characteristic.”
Schnell said cuttlefish self-control could be attributed to the need to remain still in nature to stay camouflaged, in contrast to the self-control abilities typically associated with group activity for more social creatures. The animal only comes off its sedentary hiding place to look for food, which it does in moderation.
“That doesn’t give us the full picture and each studio only offers one piece of the puzzle,” Schnell said. “We need many more studies before we can make meaningful comparisons between the general intelligence of cuttlefish and large-brained vertebrates.”