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.