We are not going to remind you here of the level of intelligence that octopuses, octopuses, squid and cuttlefish can display. In recent years, researchers have never ceased to amaze us, exhibiting memory, learning, adaptation skills, ever more widespread in these animals, however particularly distant from us – we diverged some 550 million years ago. .
Books, films, exhibitions, and even articles in the columns of this newspaper have largely relayed it. However, the study conducted by researchers from the universities of Caen and Cambridge, made public on Tuesday, February 4, in the review Biology Letters, has something to surprise. It shows indeed that the common cuttlefish, the very one that abounds in the Atlantic, from the Baltic to South Africa, is capable of projecting itself into the future to choose its present food.
In the ocean, the cuttlefish does not seem difficult. Crustaceans, gastropods, fish, and even a few cephalopod cousins, feed his general diet. And yet, the beast shows a clear preference for shrimp. In front of the charming crustacean, it abandons its other prey without hesitation. But how far can this selectivity go? Until suppressing his present desires, if the supreme reward is promised to him later?
A doctoral student at the University of Caen, Pauline Billard has developed a clever protocol. At lunchtime, two groups of cuttlefish were offered crab. Then in the evening, one of the two groups could taste shrimp while the other had to settle for a random diet, sometimes with shrimp, sometimes crab. “Not very difficult to implement and fairly effective”, comments the researcher. In a few days, the cuttlefish of the first group reduced their lunch, while those of the second continued to eat crab. Then, after sixteen days, the researcher swapped the two groups. “In less than a week, the cuttlefish have reversed their eating behavior “, She says.
Is this planning?
Could this flexibility manifest itself on a daily basis? This time, Pauline Billard and her colleagues did not change the lunch menu – still crab – but they presented the cuttlefish with shrimp for dinner every other day. “We hoped that they would adapt, but we were surprised by their speed of learning”, she admits. In twenty-three days, on average, the cuttlefish took their cruising speed: every other day, they ate a crab at lunch, the other day, two.
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