The nautilus, the archaic cousin of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, has surprisingly good powers of recollection even though it lacks the dedicated brain regions for learning and memory that other cephalopods have.
Robyn Crook and Jennifer Basil at Brooklyn College in New York trained a dozen Nautilus pompilius (pictured) to associate the smell of fish with a blue light, demonstrated by the creatures eventually extending their tentacles merely in response to a flash. The nautili could remember this training for up to 24 hours, and their recall within the first hour proved as good as that of cephalopods with far more complex neuroanatomies.
The discovery could lead to a more complete picture of brain evolution.
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Palaeobiology: Remember this. Nature 453, 826 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/453826a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/453826a
