Wised-up suckers

Wonderful news from the aquarium: cuttlefish have passed the marshmallow test. In the 1970s Stanford researchers tested children to see if they could resist one marshmallow for 15 minutes on the promise of getting two if they held out. Those who did well in this experiment in delayed gratification apparently went on to have glorious careers, wonderful marriages, countless offspring and eternal happiness. So things are looking pretty rosy for cuttlefish.

Cephalopods don't actually eat marshmallows, so in their case it was prawns (meh) and shrimps (yum) rather than one marshmallow versus two. Now the experimentalists are desperate to work out why cuttlefish would have evolved to have this ability to delay gratification.

To which I would say: why shouldn't they? You only have to look into the eyes of a cephalopod to see there's something going on there. Octopuses can free themselves from screw-top jars (what cruel bastard put them in there?) and in captivity have often been seen to squirt the humans who are mean to them (presumably the motherfuckers who put them in jars). And if you've seen My Octopus Teacher you'll know that these creatures have evolved far more intelligence than they need for their year-long lives. Much like humans, though unfortunately we do live long enough to get up to no good with our excess intelligence. For instance by screwing innocent cephalopods into jars.