New Miscellany: intelligent cuttlefish (General)

by David Turell , Friday, May 30, 2025, 19:45 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

The pass a child's test:

https://www.sciencealert.com/cephalopods-passed-a-cognitive-test-designed-for-human-chi...

"A study published in 2021 presented cuttlefish with a new version of the 'marshmallow test', and the results showed there's more going on in their strange little brains than we ever suspected.

"Their ability to learn, anticipate future rewards, and adapt their behavior, the researchers said, may have evolved to give cuttlefish an edge in the cutthroat eat-or-be-eaten marine world they live in.

"The marshmallow test, or Stanford marshmallow experiment, is pretty straightforward.

"A child is placed in a room with a marshmallow. They are told if they can manage not to eat the marshmallow for 15 minutes, they'll get a second marshmallow, and be allowed to eat both.

"This ability to delay gratification demonstrates cognitive abilities such as future planning, and it was originally conducted to study how human cognition develops; specifically, at what age a human is smart enough to delay gratification if it means a better outcome later.

"Because it's so simple, it can be adjusted for animals. Obviously you can't tell an animal they'll get a better reward if they wait, but you can train them to understand that better food is coming if they don't eat the food in front of them straight away.

"Some primates can delay gratification, along with dogs, albeit inconsistently. Corvids, too, have passed the marshmallow test.

"In 2020, cuttlefish also passed a version of the marshmallow test. Scientists showed that common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) can refrain from eating a meal of crab meat in the morning once they have learnt dinner will be something they like much better – shrimp.

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"'Cuttlefish in the present study were all able to wait for the better reward and tolerated delays for up to 50-130 seconds, which is comparable to what we see in large-brained vertebrates such as chimpanzees, crows, and parrots," Schnell explained in 2021.

"The other part of the experiment was to test how good the six cuttlefish were at learning. They were shown two different visual cues, a grey square and a white one.

"When they approached one, the other would be removed from the tank; if they made the "correct" choice, they would be rewarded with a snack.

"Once they had learnt to associate a square with a reward, the researchers switched the cues, so that the other square now became the reward cue.

"Interestingly, the cuttlefish that learnt to adapt to this change the quickest were also the cuttlefish that were able to wait longer for the shrimp reward.

***

"In species such as parrots, primates, and corvids, delayed gratification has been linked to factors such as tool use (because it requires planning ahead), food caching (for obvious reasons) and social competence (because prosocial behavior – such as making sure everyone has food – benefits social species).

"Cuttlefish, as far as we know, don't use tools or cache food, nor are they especially social. The researchers think this ability to delay gratification may instead have something to do with the way cuttlefish forage for their food.

"'Cuttlefish spend most of their time camouflaging, sitting and waiting, punctuated by brief periods of foraging," Schnell said at the time.

"'They break camouflage when they forage, so they are exposed to every predator in the ocean that wants to eat them. We speculate that delayed gratification may have evolved as a byproduct of this, so the cuttlefish can optimize foraging by waiting to choose better quality food."

"It's a fascinating example of how very different lifestyles in very different species can result in similar behaviors and cognitive abilities."

Comment: if a Cuttlefish is naturally programmed to lie in wait as it forages it has a built-in understanding of delayed gratification. It appears the study simply looked at an instinct.