13 Could 2025
Cuttlefish are solitary creatures so researchers have been shocked to find that the animals routinely use complicated arm gestures after they see one other cuttlefish.
Generally they’d elevate a pair of arms, virtually as if waving, which the workforce dubbed the “up” signal. At different instances, the animals swept all their arms to 1 aspect (“aspect”), folded them beneath their heads (“roll”), and touched simply the information of them collectively (“crown”).
— Science Journal: Watch cuttlefish talk—with enthusiastic gestures
To substantiate that frequent cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) keyed on one another’s gestures, researchers performed movies of a gesturing animal to 1 within the tank. The tank cuttlefish responded with extra gestures, not merely mimicking (mirroring) the video.
The gestures generate sound/strain waves that cuttlefish reply to even after they can’t see the animal who’s gesturing:
The scientists noticed the cuttlefish “signing” this fashion after they couldn’t see one another, in order that they used a hydrophone to seize the strain waves produced from every signal. When the researchers then performed again this sound for the animals with none visible cues, the cuttlefish typically responded by signing—notably proper by the hydrophone, the researchers famous to Reside Science.
— Science Journal: Watch cuttlefish talk—with enthusiastic gestures
See gesturing cuttlefish reply to those cues within the video beneath. (If the narration is obscure, flip down the sound and skim the textual content.)
The subsequent step shall be to determine if that is cuttlefish signal language.
Learn extra at Science Journal: Watch cuttlefish talk—with enthusiastic gestures.
For a deeper dive into the intelligence of cuttlefish see this 10-minute video about delayed gratification. It contains cute youngsters doing the same delayed gratification experiment + hypothesis on why cuttlefish can anticipate prey to turn out to be obtainable.
