Cuttlefish moms laugh at "The-Pre-Natal Baby's First Music Lessons"

[cnoocy]

Cuttlefish embryos learn how to recognize prey visually

Remarkably, cuttlefish embryos not exposed to crabs preferred to hunt shrimp once they were born.

But those embryos exposed to crabs much preferred to hunt crabs after hatching. And the clearer the view of the crabs they were given, the greater their taste for it.

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Actually, this kind of gives the whole playing music for your fetus thing some support - if cuttlefish can develop their brains before birth, surely we humans can do it too. (I wonder if such music would be associated with the comfort of the womb, or if we're more like cuttlefish and it would just make babies more interested in hunting down Mozart or whoever.)

[cnoocy]

The article says that it's pretty well-established that animals can learn chemical and auditory information before birth. This news is notable because it's the first demonstration of visual information being learned pre-natally. According to the article, the cuttlefish have two advantages on us for this: the obvious advantage of spending their pre-natal time someplace transparent, and the less obvious one of eary ocular development. Human eyes don't really get up to speed until a while after birth.

Basically, my point is very much "Cuttlefish learn about prey as embryos! How badass is that?"

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. "Bring it, crabs! I've been ready to kill and eat you since before I was BORN!"

[cnoocy]

The cuttlefish in the article's second picture appears to be thinking something similar to that, actually.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

If only we had a larger version of that picture - and an image editing program, and the Impact font...

Some say they still crawl these very woods...

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Image of babies hunting down Mozart gave me heartiest LOL for a while. Well put, M. Space Cuttlefish!