The effect of unexpected rewards on decision making in cuttlefish.

ABSTRACT: Despite numerous studies demonstrating the cognitive ability of cephalopods, there is currently no study showing an emotion-like behavior in this group of animals. To examine whether cuttlefish have different internal states, we developed a behavioral paradigm to assess if prior surprised events are able to alter the choice made by cuttlefish. By presenting unexpected food rewards to cuttlefish before the test, we investigated whether the reaction time of choosing between two shrimps, an intuitive response toward the prey without previous learning, at three different levels of discriminative tests (easy, difficult, and ambiguous), are different compared to the one without an unexpected reward. This behavioral paradigm serves to demonstrate whether cuttlefish are aware of ambiguous situatio

SUBMITTER: Chung TT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8847567 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature