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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cephalopod intelligence is a measure of the cognitive ability of the the cephalopod class of molluscs.
The difficulty of measuring intelligence in non-human animals makes it a challenging topic for scientific study, however in general intelligence is defined as the process of acquiring, storing in memory, retrieving, combining, comparing, and using in new contexts information and conceptual skills.[1] The study of cephalopod intelligence has an important comparative aspect in the understanding of animal cognition because it relies on a nervous system fundamentally different from that of vertebrates.[2] In particular, the Coleoidea subclass (cuttlefish, squid, and octopi), are thought to be the most intelligent invertebrates and an important example of advanced cognitive evolution in animals, though nautilus intelligence is also a subject of growing interest among zoologists.[3]
The scope of cephalopod intelligence and learning capability is controversial within the biological community, complicated by the inherit complexity quantifying non-vertebrate intelligence. In spite of this, the existence of impressive spatial learning capacity, navigational abilities, and predatory techniques in cephalopods is widely acknowledged.[4]