Researchers recently caught cuttlefish waving at each other, in yet another sign of the camouflaging creature’s intelligence and sociability.
Scientists recorded footage of four distinct arm signals made by two different species of cuttlefish. These weren’t random spasms or incidental gesticulations that humans are imprinting their meaning upon. They call the signals “up,” “side,” “roll,” and “crown.”
When played back on video to other cuttlefish, the other cuttlefish waved back. Researchers found that the cuttlefish responded better to vertical video than horizontal video. These are TikTok generation cuttlefish, it seems.
Cuttlefish Might Be Communicating With Each Other Through A Type Of Sign Language
These weren’t just random spasms, either. When played back on video, other cuttlefish waved back, but only when the footage was upright. Flip it upside down? No dice. Apparently, these sea-creatures know which way is up and don’t have time for your avant-garde arthropod cinema.
Scientists know their waving, but why they’re waving is anybody’s guess. Theories range from courtship to turf wars to the cuttlefish expressing their moods to one another. They record one instance of a cuttlefish waving and another one backing off in response, which could mean dominance…or something else entirely.
And it’s not just arm waving. There is something much more intriguing going on with the behavior that wasn’t immediately visible to the naked eye.
The scientists found the arm waves generate water vibrations, meaning cuttlefish might be having full-on multimodal conversations using sight and “mechanoreception,” all of which is to say that the cuttlefish were able to communicate by literal vibes, as in vibrations, without having to see the wave signals. When visibility is low, the cuttlefish can communicate through an aquatic Morse code.
French researchers are working on machine learning models to decode these waves, creating what amounts to a Rosetta Stone for cuttlefish sign language, kind of like how Google is hoping AI can allow them to decode dolphin clicks and whistles.
We might all live to see the day when the human race decodes the languages spoken by a variety of sea creatures, and we may even be able to speak back to them. I hope we’re ready to absorb some harsh criticism because you just know dolphins and cuttlefish have nothing but bad things to say about us.
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