I've seen large cuttlefish in a very large tank in Sydney oceanarium. It was a slow day so I was alone in front of that tank. I played hide and seek through the glass with this cuttle fish as if it was a dog. It was curious, playful and mesmerizing with its weird eyes, wavy fins and color changing skin.
Get your SCUBA open water if you can. Sydney is a great place to dive if a little cold in the winter. Cuttle fish and octopus are fantastic up close. The colour change still creeps me out and amazes me at the same time.
I would recommend Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book called Other Minds to appreciate further how fascinating these animals are (the book talks about other cephalopods like octopus too).
I don't remember what I ate two weeks ago, unless it's some special dinner, so yeah. Every day I grapple with this awkward moment between birth and death.
But that is not what they test the cutlefish on! They check if they seem to recall foraging patterns. In case of a modern human a foraging pattern would be knowing how to get to a grocery store, select the items you like, perform the higly abstract ritual of “paying at the cashier”, get back home and prepare the food.
Do you have problems finding your regular grocery store? Can you recall your personal preferences as you are staring at the items? Did it ever happen that you went home and couldnt figure out how to prepare what you usually do? If you can pass all of these you would probably also pass the test these cuttlefish passed.
If you also exhibit seasonal patterns in your foraging, like for example preparing a turkey once a year, or going wild for pumpkin spice latte in certain seasons then you are over performing really.
If you have ever drove past a grocery store just to get to your favourite pizza place that shows that you are able to delay your gratification. Heck, even if you just were able to drive home from the grocery store to warm some food up shows that already.
I understand that these all feel flippant, but we didn’t asked the cuttlefish what they had for breakfast. We observed how they behave, how they feed themselves. Most healthy humans would also pass similar observations and tests with flying colours.
yeah, most of the details of my life, I cannot recall, even recent ones...however, on the other hand, my wife remembers minor mistakes I made 20 years ago
Let's be honest we all remember a stupid thing we said or did 20 years ago.
TFA briefly mentions the hippocampus owning these kinds of episodic memories in humans although cuttlefish don't have hippocampuses(i?).
It's weird how "embarrassment trauma" memories can last so long and can force that sort of weird ooph sigh every time we recall them.
Perhaps cuttlefish experience every meal as an embarrassing memory. (Kidding but only kind of. The experience of memories is interesting - Radio Lab did a series on it iirc.)
John Green has put this to words in a very John Green-like way:
But I can recall my every mortification as if it occurred moments ago. I know this because each evening when I finish reading for the night, I’ll turn off my bedside lamp, roll over onto my side, close my eyes, and my brain will say. “Oh, good evening. Should we play the blooper reel?” And I’ll say, “Ah, you know, I’d really rather not,” and my brain will say, “Excellent. Let’s begin in a high school auditorium outside of San Francisco.”
One difference is that eating is such a normal and low effort activity for us that there is no point for the brain to remember it. But if you were surviving in the wild, I bet you’d have much better memory of meals since they would all be somewhat ‘special’ in the sense that you are still alive!
If you had to every meal, and were seriously hungry, and every hunt was different, I think you'd remember many of them as well as your favourite book/movie/tv episode, insight, bug solved, life-event.
