Visual Discrimination of Shape by Octopus

Abstract

An investigation of the relative discriminability of circles and squares, and circles and triangles for octopus is described. The main findings were: (1) The three pairs of figures, circle and square with base horizontal, circle and square with base at 45° to the horizontal, circle and equilateral triangle were equally discriminable for the octopus. (2) Complete transfer occurred to larger and smaller figures. (3) No transfer occurred from a square in one orientation to a square rotated through 45°, nor did training with the square in one orientation lead to any saving when the discrimination was relearned with the square in the other orientation. (4) No transfer occurred from a square to a pentagon. (5) The method of training with reward on every positive trial leads to quicker initial learning of a discrimination than training with reward only where the positive figure is attacked, but discriminatory performance with the two methods approached the same asymptote. The results are in agreement with findings with other animals where these are available for comparison.