Perhaps the most unknown members of the cephalopods, a group that counts octopuses, squid and nautiluses among them, sepia much remains to be proved. Recently, a crew of six common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) did just that, concentrating his sinusoidal and collective pupils 48 arms and 12 tentacles on the task of delaying satisfaction before eating, for the sake of a more delicious meal.
The cuttlefish test was the project of an international team of researchers seeking to investigate the intelligence of cephalopods, an area less explored than similar lines of investigation for mammalian and bird species. The team’s research was published Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Knowing animals has been a subject of human intrigue at least since Darwin sent shock waves through the establishment of an evolutionary connection between humanity and primates. Scientists have sought to better understand the limits and range of knowledge of animals at the time, most famous in the work of Ivan Pavlov and his dogs or BF Skinner and his rats. But recent researchers have gone beyond questions about classical conditioning and focused on the ability of dogs to keep whole banks of words for their toys or pigs inclination for video games.
“Our understanding of why self-control has evolved has always been based on evolutionary pressures that are relevant to long-term social species,” said Alexandra Schnell, a comparative psychologist at Cambridge University and lead author of the recent paper. “Sepia has not experienced the same pressures.”
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In the case of the last six cuttlefish adolescents who participated in the study (Mica, Pinto, Demi, Franklin, Jebidiah and Rogelio, as two other cuttlefish gave up), the task at hand involved choosing between a piece of shrimp immediately available or waiting the possibility of being offered a live grass shrimp to eat, the latter being the most coveted meal. The team that studied them found this after training, some cuttlefish they managed to wait up to two minutes for a better reward, showing that they understood both implications of taking a while before taking action. Sepia, which was particularly patient, was also quite reflexive when exercise conditions changed. When the food reward mark was changed, those patient cephalopods adapted the fastest.
Sepia is not very social in the way humans or chimpanzees are, as the latter species tend to live in groups that help to drill certain principles of self-control for the sake of the whole group. As a result, he was not sure if the animals would be so reluctant to eat for free.
“This finding is an example of extremely convergent evolution,” Schnell said. “Sepia has evolutionary histories significantly different from the most commonly studied monkeys, crows and parrots and yet have the same cognitive trait.”
Schnell said cuttlefish self-control could be attributed to his need to remain motionless in the wild to remain camouflaged, in contrast to the self-control abilities usually associated with group work for more social creatures. The animal breaks only from its sedentary hiding place to feed for food, which it does with purchase.
“This doesn’t give us the whole picture, and each study offers only 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.”