Cuttlefish passes cognitive tests designed for human children

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Originally published at: Cuttlefish passes cognitive tests designed for human children | Boing Boing

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Cuttlefish passes cognitive tests designed for human children

“Person, woman, man, camera, TV”

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I like the cuttlefish a might more than I do the drooling fool tRump who said “Person, woman, man, camera, TV”…

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Cuttlefish are cool, man.

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You ain’t half bad yourself.

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It’s the fact that my brain is connected directly to my chromatophores; so that my entire range of thoughts and emotions appear directly on my skin. I can vary all the way from taupe to beige.

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So 80’s, do you go to mauve?

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Not on a first date.

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So adorbs. Moar liek CUDDLEfish AMIRITE?!?!//1

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The researchers found that all of the cuttlefish in the test condition decided to wait for their preferred food

Always wait for the preferred food.

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And we wonder why they decided to rise up and overthrow us? Welcome to Planet of the Macaques!

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Some notes on the mis-reporting here:

  • Mischel’s marshmallow test is not a cognitive test–it is about self-control, delay of gratification, and following verbal instructions–in a single trial.
  • I’m almost certain that Skinner trained pigeons and rats and things to do this years ago.
  • The authors don’t call it a cognitive test, or the marshmallow test.
  • Although they cite Mischel, they do it to describe delay-of-gratification.
  • There is no way a cuttlefish could pass Mischel’s test, because they can’t understand instructions.
  • To do this, it involved many days of training, in several conditions, to let the cuttlefish understand the delay contingencies. They ramp up the delay associated with some stimulus slowly from 2s to 20s over 2-6 days.
  • There is no ‘passing’ the test. The results are here:
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Maybe you just don’t speak cuttlefish well enough and that is the problem.

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And they’re so good with ginger and green onion.

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They’re also good at getting into a line, another required skill for succeeding in school

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That’s the first time I’ve heard human children described that way, but okay…

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I’m surprised this one isn’t already here…

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merely a modest proposal

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Great, now all the 1%ers are going to buy cuttlefish to get their children through school.

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My takeaway from this is that intelligence-measuring experiments need as many subjects as possible, as every one I’ve seen had a spread of apparent IQs amongst the animals.

It’s like measuring human IQs at, say, the Institute for Advanced Study vs an APAC audience and expecting similar results.