Cuttlefish Seem to ‘Wave’ at Each Other, but What They’re Saying Is a Mystery

Researchers just spotted cunning cuttlefish waving to one another with their tentacles, a previously unobserved behavior that pushes the boundaries of the creature’s intelligence. Cuttlefish—sometimes referred to as the “chameleons of the sea”—are renowned for their camouflage abilities. In other cephalopods, that color-changing capacity is also used for communication. And like other cephalopods, namely octopuses, cuttlefish are quite intelligent. The cuttlefish’s apparent waving behavior reveals a new aspect of their sophistication, and opens up a new avenue for researchers to investigate their smarts using machine learning. The team’s research is not yet peer-reviewed, and is hosted on the preprint server bioRxiv. In its research, the team studied four different arm movements in two cuttlefish species, S. officinalis and S. bandensis. The researchers recorded videos of animals signing and played them back to the “cuttlefish participants,” who waved back at the displays. The team al ... Read full article.