At the same time, both apes and corvids are faced with the ecological challenge of relying on variable and unpredictable food resources. To cooperate better with sharing affiliates, self-control may have evolved in these species to inhibit individuals from solely basing foraging decisions on their own needs. Some species of apes and corvids are faced with the social challenge of sharing food with conspecifics. To illustrate this dilemma, consider the following example. Ĭurrently, it is difficult to uncouple the factors that influence self-control because many of the previously studied species share similar life histories and face similar socio-ecological challenges. It has also been suggested that species that rely on variable food resources that are difficult to obtain or risky to retrieve possess advanced self-control because the ability to wait for the optimal moment to forage or hunt might increase their chances of success. For example, social species that rely on cooperation to survive might exhibit advanced self-control because an individual must overcome immediate gratification to help a conspecific in the present in order to receive a reciprocated favour in the future. Specific socio-ecological factors might also influence self-control abilities across taxa. Increased delayed gratification abilities have been attributed to a variety of factors including life-history characteristics, whereby larger species with lower metabolisms and longer life expectancies can potentially tolerate longer delays. By contrast, other taxa such as some monkey species, rodents, chickens and pigeons find it difficult to inhibit the consumption of a desirable food item for a delayed gain and thus exhibit relatively lower degrees of self-control. For example, relative degrees of self-control are typically higher in non-human great apes (henceforth apes), corvids and parrots. The ability to delay gratification not only varies within but also across taxa. Yet, whether self-control is linked to cognitive performance in non-primate taxa remains to be tested. A recent study on chimpanzees has also demonstrated a link between self-control and cognitive performance, showing that their ability to delay gratification was correlated positively with performance across 13 cognitive tasks. In humans, self-control has been linked to cognitive performance, whereby individuals who delay gratification for longer achieve higher scores in a range of academic tasks. Self-control, the ability to overcome immediate gratification in favour of a better but delayed reward, is a vital cognitive skill that underpins effective decision-making, goal-directed behaviours and future planning. Our results demonstrate that cuttlefish can tolerate delays to obtain food of higher quality comparable to that of some large-brained vertebrates. Cuttlefish that delayed gratification for longer had better learning performance. To test learning performance, we used a reversal-learning task, whereby cuttlefish were required to learn to associate the reward with one of two stimuli and then subsequently learn to associate the reward with the alternative stimulus. Cuttlefish maintained delay durations for up to 50–130 s. To test self-control, cuttlefish were presented with a delay maintenance task, which measures an individual's ability to forgo immediate gratification and sustain a delay for a better but delayed reward. Here, we investigate self-control and learning performance in cuttlefish, an invertebrate that is thought to have evolved under partially different pressures to previously studied vertebrates. These pressures are difficult to uncouple because previously studied species face similar socio-ecological challenges. Advanced self-control has been linked to better performance in cognitive tasks and has been hypothesized to evolve in response to specific socio-ecological pressures. Some species can exert self-control for several seconds whereas others, such as large-brained vertebrates, can tolerate delays of up to several minutes. The ability to exert self-control varies within and across taxa.
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