Imprinting: seeing food and eating it.
A recent study has found that although, ordinarily, cuttlefish hatchlings prefer shrimp-like prey, when visually exposed to crabs in the first hours of day one, they later prefer crabs to shrimps. As the development of this preference occurs during a short sensitive phase, does not depend on food ingestion and is long lasting, it fulfils all the criteria for imprinting, a phenomenon more usually associated with vertebrates and social learning.
Healy
Susan D
SD
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK. s.healy@ed.ac.uk
D000818:Animals; D003386:Brachyura; D033364:Decapoda; D049832:Decapodiformes / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000502:physiology*; D007173:Imprinting, Psychological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012758:Shellfish