Cuttlefish found to have similar self-control abilities to humans

Cuttlefish are fast learners and can exercise self-control in the same way large-brained animals, such as parrots and crows, can, according to new research.

The study – published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B – saw scientists use an adapted version of the Stanford marshmallow test to test if cuttlefish were able to wait for a better meal rather than take food immediately in front of them.

In the Stanford test, children are given the choice to receive one marshmallow right away or wait for a period of time and receive two marshmallows instead. The experiment was picked up on the social media app TikTok last year – prompting a string of celebrities to film themselves leaving the room, instructing their children to wait to eat their food until they returned.

Cuttlefish were able to tolerate delays up to 130 seconds, researchers said, having quickly realised the reward for waiting was much greater than instant gratification.

Scientists also found that fishes able to wait scored better in a learning test, which examined cognitive performance by training cuttlefish to associate visual cues with a food reward.

The unique trial suggests a link between self-control and intelligence in cuttles, seen only before in humans and chimpanzees, though why they have evolved in this way is not immediately clear, researchers said.

While humans are thought to have learnt delayed gratification to strengthen social bonds – such as waiting until everyone is seated before starting a meal – experts suggest it may be a by-product of the cuttlefish’s need to camouflage in order to survive.

Dr Alex Schnell, a comparative psychologist at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the paper, said: “Cuttlefish spend most of their time camouflaging, sitting and waiting, punctuated by brief periods of foraging.

“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 by-product of this, so the cuttlefish can optimise foraging by waiting to choose better quality food.”

Dr Schnell and Roger Hanlon, a leading expert in cephalopod behaviour and joint senior author of the study, concluded that the identified link between self-control and learning performance was a major breakthrough.

Such a finding in a species outside of the “primate lineage,” they said, is an extreme example of “convergent evolution” – where species’ completely separate evolutionary histories have led to the same cognitive feature.