Invertebrate Learning and Memory

Octopus is an invertebrate well-known for the extreme richness of its behavioral repertoire and plasticity. Recent field observations including mimicry, communicative skills, and tool use capabilities have further supported this view. This chapter briefly reviews the most recent knowledge on octopus learning capabilities, focusing on its capability to learn by observation of conspecifics. Social learning is classically conceived as a behavioral trait shown by gregarious and long-lived animals. However, it has recently been considered to occur in solitary vertebrate and invertebrate species. This chapter provides an update on the experimental evidence for observational learning in the octopus and discusses the constraints and peculiarities of social learning and the potential evolutionary meanings of this capability in this cephalopod mollusk.