Living Fossils Have Long- And Short-term Memory Despite Lacking Brain Structures Of Modern Cephalopods

Robyn Crook from the City University of New York reports that Nautilus, the ancient living ancestors of modern cephalopods, have both long and short-term memory, despite lacking the brain structures that modern cephalopods evolved for long-term memory.

Nautiloids are the sole surviving family of externally-shelled cephalopods that thrived in the tropical oceans 450–150 million years ago. However, in the intervening years their modern soft bodied relatives dumped the shell and developed complex central nervous systems; which makes Nautilus ideally suited to discover the ‘evolutionary pathways that led to the development of the complex coleoid [soft bodied cephalopod] brains’ say Robyn Crook and Jennifer Basil. Knowing that the simple Nautilus brain lacks the structures required for memory in more sophisticated cephalopods, Crook and Basil decided to test the living fossil’s memory.

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Tagged as: Animals, Brains, Cephalopods, City University of New York, Long-term Memory, Memory, Nautiloids, Nautilus, Short-term Memory