A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children - ScienceAlert

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.

Last year, 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.

So they designed another test, for six common cuttlefish.

In the test condition, the prawn was placed behind the open door, while the live shrimp was only accessible after a delay.

The researchers found that all of the cuttlefish in the test condition decided to wait for their preferred food (the live shrimp), but didn't bother to do so in the control group, where they couldn't access it.

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.

The researchers think this ability to delay gratification may instead have something to do with the way cuttlefish forage for their food.