Abstract
FOOD, such as a piece of fish, placed against the suckers of an octopus arm is usually transported to the mouth by a combination of arm and sucker movements, here termed the accept reflex. The opposite reflex, reject, involves passing food distally along the suckers to the arm tip and pushing it away1. Rejection is less frequent in normal octopuses but can be enhanced by punishment for accepting objects placed against the suckers. This is the basis of tactile training experiments2.
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ALTMAN, J. Control of Accept and Reject Reflexes in the Octopus. Nature 229, 204–206 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/229204a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/229204a0
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