Old squid still has great memories

A squid with an airship-shaped body and eight wavy arms does not age like a human. Sexual maturity tends to be slower for them — about three-quarters of their two-year life, almost equivalent to hitting puberty in humans in their sixties. The old man’s cephalopod then spends weeks on an absolute vendor and works with as many partners as possible. Only after these enthusiastic sexual jackpots will true corruption claim them. Their feeding tentacles are loose. Their appetite throws them away. Their changing skin flickers like a Fritz TV. Animals almost instantly turn from sexual prime to unhealthy suffering and die within a few days. Alex Schnell, a squid biologist at the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Marine Biology in Massachusetts, told me, “They really go out in a fuss.”

However, before this rapid accusation, animals relatively retain body and mind sounds.Schnell and her colleague I found That common squid (Sepia OfficinalisOnly one month before death, you can form and retain a clear memory of your personal experience.They can be cataloged what, when, When where Keep track of recent events and use that knowledge to inform you of your current behavior. This is an animal approximation of what is called human episodic memory, an ability often claimed as a kind of spiritual time travel that allows living things to relive past experiences. For us, episodic memory is usually Decline around retirement age.. However, the squid version seems to persist deep into their golden moon. Gabriel Nar, a neurobiologist who studied rat memory at Indiana University and was not involved in Schnell’s work, said, “I have shown that memory like episodes has not yet been compromised. I’m not familiar with animal models. “

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That squid can form an episode-like memory in Any Age is noteworthy. Among humans, episodic memory is a source of subjective knowledge that cannot be found in textbooks or Google searches. They live in a world of personal storytelling, each unique to the individual who creates them. Until the late 1990s, researchers had no evidence that non-human animals could even manage the basics of this type of recall.

Cambridge University researchers Nicky Clayton and Anthony Dickinson Indicated Western Scrub Jay knew when and where he hid a particular cache of food and wouldn’t regain the hidden nosh for enough time to spoil. What the bird achieved was not an accurate echo of the emotional and self-conscious, remembering that humans engage when waxing nostalgic for the first date, for example. But at least all the spiritual elements seemed to be there.

In the 20 years since then, the club has been wondering when, where and what to remember. grown include More birds, Rodents, dog, others.Cuttlefish, already famous for its large and sophisticated brains, has become a card-carrying member. In 2013, When a team led by Clayton and Christelle Jozet-Alves showed that they were raised in the laboratory Cephalopods Like the Mental Food Journal, researchers can track what, when, and where they ate after serving their snacks in sequence. Schnell got the project a few years ago and was curious about whether their abilities could withstand the devastation of time. Among humans, episodic memory is “one of the first types of memory that begins to deteriorate as individuals grow older,” she told me. However, in a series of tricky trials designed by Schnell and her colleagues, middle-aged squids about 10-12 months old and 22-24 months old and only a few weeks after puberty after death. Both of the squids kept their wisdom about them.

Researchers first deal with cephalopods with common facts and concepts, proving that they can memorize feeding routines using another form of memory called semantic memory that remains intact even in the elderly. I was allowed to. Squids have learned to swim to specific locations within tanks marked with the same black and white symbol and earn edible rewards at different times of the day. This is the same as eating at the kitchen counter at noon, in the corner of breakfast in the morning. There is a formal dining room in the evening.

After that, more rigorous testing was done. Researchers trained six new animals in each age group to associate the same black-and-white symbol with two food types: live grass shrimp, squid premium food, or boring shrimp masses. .. In the morning, the squid chose both seafood at once, each in its own place in the aquarium. Then, after 1 hour, feed a second time using only less desirable menu items, or after 3 hours, feed a second time using both options.

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For an hour, the squid had to swim to the place where the shrimp for breakfast was served to have a second meal. After 3 hours, they were able to hang out at the shrimp location for a tastier reward. (Obviously, the squid can know what time it is, and no one yet knows how to do it.) In short, the squid had to match. what They ate for breakfast where The larvae first appeared while calculating how much time had passed since the last feeding. Every day of the experiment, shrimp and shrimp feeding grounds were moving around. Therefore, the squid depended on the personal experience of the morning meal and had to be adjusted accordingly.

Most older people would have ridiculed the human version of the team’s experiments, Schnell said. But all the squids passed, “it’s very complicated for animals to do,” said Robin, a neurobiologist, cephalopod expert, and not involved in the study at San Francisco State University. Crook told me.If anything, Schnell said, the old ones Faster By learning the rules and applying them in a new context, it’s “quite amazing”.

Wild squids do not hunt alongside black and white symbols in aquariums. However, Schnell and Clayton believe that the skills demonstrated by cephalopods in these experiments may lead to hunting and even orgy across their hills. Recreating personal memories in the head helps, for example, to track coral reefs where animals crawl with crabs at dusk, and males or females that have already busted. And of course, revisiting memories is past. Squids may be one of the few animals that have enough cognitive ammunition to plan ahead with their memories.Previous studies by Schnell et al. Have shown that cephalopods pass through mediocre foods. If they know that better options will come-Form self control It takes years for human children to fully develop.

Adapting human concepts and experiments to other animals is always tricky, especially because the desires and needs of other species, and the ingenuity needed to navigate them, are very different from ours. It’s a business.Some researchers Stay skeptical What, when and where Memories, which may be impressive, count as episodes. Jennifer Vonk, an animal cognition expert at the University of Auckland, Michigan, who was not involved in the study, said the tasks assigned to squids were “not challenging enough” to really push their personal limits. Recall that I told me there was a possibility. Under more natural circumstances, there may be more distractions and more clearly indicated cephalopod weaknesses.

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After all, old squids are not completely impervious to aging. Well suited for repeated seizures of sex, but still shows slight signs of wear: slow reflexes, lack of interest in food, rough skin. Schnell sees this happening with a laboratory-raised virgin squid. And it reaches their last day without the opportunity to mate.Trevor Wardill to study Squid vision Not involved in Schnell’s research at the University of Minnesota, he told me in certain hunting simulations that he found that aged animals were having a hard time attacking fake prey. The 1990s treatises Aged squid May be again There’s a problem Keep long-term memories.

In a sense, in squid terminology, it’s hard to define what aging really is. Jennifer Mother, a squid biologist at the University of Lethbridge, Canada, who was not involved in the study, told me that humans are accustomed to “long-term maturity and a slow decline to aging.” Cephalopods follow a more winding path to adulthood, speeding up sexually active stints and then “rapidly declining.” (Crook also pointed out that genders not found in these squids could accelerate the aging process.) If the team had been testing squids in the last few days of their existence-it was very difficult. Would-they found very different results they might have had. Year When aging Not always the same. Perhaps the older squid in this study isn’t surprisingly sharp, but it’s just a typical adult and behaves exactly like its true age.