Abstract
Visual attack for prey capture in cuttlefish involves three well characterized sequential stages: attention, positioning, and seizure. This visually guided behavior requires accurate sensorimotor integration of information on the target’s direction and tentacular strike control. While the behavior of cuttlefish visual attack on a stationary prey has been described qualitatively, the kinematics of visual attack on a moving target has not been analyzed quantitatively. A servomotor system controlling the movement of a shrimp prey and a high resolution imaging system recording the behavior of the cuttlefish predator, together with the newly developed DeepLabCut image processing system, were used to examine the tactics used by cuttlefish during a visual attack on moving prey. The results showed that cuttlefish visually tracked a moving prey target using mainly body movement, and that they maintained a similar speed to that of the moving prey right before making their tentacular strike. When cuttlefish shot out their tentacles for prey capture, they were able to either predict the target location based on the prey’s speed and compensate for the inherent sensorimotor delay or adjust the trajectory of their tentacular strike according to the prey’s direction of movement in order to account for any changes in prey position. These observations suggest that cuttlefish use the various visual tactics available to them flexibly in order to capture moving prey, and that they are able to extract direction and speed information from moving prey in order to allow an accurate visual attack.
Highlights
Cephalopods are highly visual animals, and most of their behaviors are visually driven (Hanlon and Messenger, 2018)
It was observed that the cuttlefish reduced the visual attack angle α before making their tentacular strike (Figure 3D)
There was less eye movement observed when the cuttlefish actively tracked the moving prey, as the eye angle β was kept relatively steady throughout the visual attack (Figure 3E)
Summary
Cephalopods (octopuses, cuttlefish, and squids) are highly visual animals, and most of their behaviors are visually driven (Hanlon and Messenger, 2018). Unlike octopuses, which predominately use monocular vision and arms to grab their prey (Maldonado, 1964; Messenger, 1967) cuttlefish and squids use binocular vision and a tentacular strike to capture small fast-moving prey with great accuracy (Messenger, 1968; Kier and Leeuwen, 1997). It is well known that the prey capture tentacles of squid and cuttlefish lack rigid skeletal elements; rather they consist of a three-dimensional array of muscle fibers called a muscular hydrostat This hydrostat allows the tentacular strike to be actively controlled and maneuvered (Kier, 2016). The foregoing suggest that cuttlefish are ideal animals for the study of sensorimotor integration during dynamic prey capture behavior
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