Octopus again!!! Learning and memory stuff...

[Hugo Sanchez-Castillo]

There was a very famous octopus that could predict the results of different soccer matches. The octopus (named Paul) choose the soccer team and that selection will be the winner of the match... Really Paul?? really?... Unfortunately, there is no such thing as future predictions. The phenomenon we observe is the decision-making related to the colors, the patterns, or even the familiarity of the stimuli. To study this kind of phenomenon we can use the Novel Object Recognition Task in which we expose the subjects to some objects to explore. In the next trials, we present to the subjects a previously shown object (familiar) and a new one. We measure the exploring time, the kind of interaction, etc. This task is normally used with rats, monkeys, and humans, but never with octopuses!!... In our lab, we used this kind of task adapted to the octopuses and we showed that the octopuses are pretty good doing that, that the performance is different at different ages, but is so similar to rats, monkeys, and humans...

Vergara-Ovalle, F., Ayala-Guerrero, F., Rosas, C. & Sanchez-Castillo, H. Novel object recognition in Octopus maya. Anim Cogn 26, 1065–1072 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01753-6

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Edited April 28 by Hugo Sanchez-Castillo
A part od DOI was missed