Learning can occur through self-experience with the environment, or through the observation of others. The latter allows for adaptive behaviour without trial-and-error, thus maximizing individual fitness. Perhaps given their mostly solitary lifestyle, cuttlefish have seldomly been tested under observational learning scenarios. Here we used a multi-treatment design to disentangle if and how neurally immature cuttlefish Sepia officinalis hatchlings (up to 5 days) incorporate social information into their decision-making, when performing a task where inhibition of predatory behaviour is learned. In the classical social learning treatment using pre-trained demonstrators, observers did not register any predatory behaviour. In the inhibition by social learning treatment, using naïve (or sham) demonstrators, more observers than demonstrators learned the task, while also reaching learning criterion in fewer trials, and performing less number of attacks per trial. Moreover, the performance of demonstrator–observer pairs was highly correlated, indicating that the mere presence of conspecifics did not explain our results by itself. Additionally, observers always reported higher latency time to attack during trials, a trend that was reversed in the positive controls. Lastly, pre-exposure to the stimulus did not improve learning rates. Our findings reveal the vicarious capacity of these invertebrate newborns to learn modulation (inhibition) of predatory behaviour, potentially through emulation (i.e. affordance learning). Despite ongoing changes on neural organization during early ontogeny, cognitively demanding forms of learning are already present in cuttlefish newborns, facilitating behavioural adaptation at a critical life stage, and potentially improving individual fitness in the environment.

学习可以通过对环境的自我体验或通过对他人的观察来进行。后者允许无需反复试验的适应性行为，从而最大限度地提高个体适应性。也许考虑到乌贼大多是独居的生活方式，它们很少在观察学习场景下进行测试。在这里，我们使用了多处理设计来解开神经不成熟的墨鱼乌贼幼体（最多 5 天）在执行学习抑制捕食行为的任务时是否以及如何将社会信息纳入其决策中。在使用预先训练的示威者的经典社会学习治疗中，观察者没有记录到任何掠夺性行为。在社会学习治疗的抑制中，使用天真的（或假的）示威者，比示威者更多的观察者学会了任务，同时在更少的试验中达到学习标准，并且每次试验执行更少的攻击次数。此外，演示者-观察者对的表现高度相关，这表明仅仅同种人的存在本身并不能解释我们的结果。此外，观察者总是报告在试验期间攻击的潜伏时间较长，这一趋势在阳性对照中发生了逆转。最后，预先接触刺激并没有提高学习率。我们的研究结果揭示了这些无脊椎动物新生儿可能通过模仿（即可供性学习）学习调节（抑制）掠夺行为的替代能力。尽管在个体发育早期神经组织不断发生变化，但墨鱼新生儿中已经存在认知要求较高的学习形式，促进了关键生命阶段的行为适应，并有可能改善个体在环境中的适应性。