ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
Cuttlefish exert self-control in a delay of gratification task.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Cephalopod Behavior: From Neural Plasticity to Consciousness.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Human-Animal Therapeutic Relationships: Communication, Welfare and Interpretative Asymmetry.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Performance of sheep and goats in a delay of gratification task.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Article
- From probability to plausibility in climate-risk scenarios: a cognitive framework for decision-making under deep uncertainty.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- Episodic-like memory in a simulation of cuttlefish behavior.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Assessing the limits of delay of gratification in bumble bees.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Lizards and tortoises show evidence of low inhibitory control.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- To know or not to know? Curiosity and the value of prospective information in animals.Learning & behavior · 2025Review
- Interpreting insect behavior through the lens of executive functions.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Time in mind: a multidisciplinary review on temporal perception, cognition, and memory.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Review
- Octopus toss-up: Is debris throwing driven by intent?Learning & behavior · 2024Article
- Measuring self-control in a wild songbird using a spatial discounting task.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- The effect of reward value on the performance of long-tailed macaques (Primate biology · 2024Article
- The Inner Lives of Cephalopods.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Article
- Invisible Invertebrates: The Welfare of Invertebrates in Public Aquaria.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Article
- 'Arm brains' (axial nerves) of Jurassic coleoids and the evolution of coleoid neuroanatomy.Swiss journal of palaeontology · 2023Article
- Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to exert self-control varies within and across taxa. Some species can exert self-control for several seconds whereas others, such as large-brained vertebrates, can tolerate delays of up to several minutes. Advanced self-control has been linked to better performance in cognitive tasks and has been hypothesized to evolve in response to specific socio-ecological pressures. These pressures are difficult to uncouple because previously studied species face similar socio-ecological challenges. Here, we investigate self-control and learning performance in cuttlefish, an invertebrate that is thought to have evolved under partially different pressures to previously studied vertebrates. To test self-control, cuttlefish were presented with a delay maintenance task, which measures an individual's ability to forgo immediate gratification and sustain a delay for a better but delayed reward. Cuttlefish maintained delay durations for up to 50-130 s. To test learning performance, we used a reversal-learning task, whereby cuttlefish were required to learn to associate the reward with one of two stimuli and then subsequently learn to associate the reward with the alternative stimulus. Cuttlefish that delayed gratification for longer had better learning performance. Our results demonstrate that cuttlefish can tolerate delays to obtain food of higher quality comparable to that of some large-brained vertebrates.
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