Defensive tool use in a coconut-carrying octopus

one to four in the mother tongue of the participants. E continued to demonstrate the movement sequence until participants could reproduce it by themselves. Then, E rotated them 180 degrees around their own axis, and positioned himself behind them (Figure 1: Rotation 1). E asked the participants to 'dance again'. After the participants performed, E rotated them back into their original orientation (Figure 1: Rotation 2). If participants coded a RLRR dance in egocentric coordinates they should produce a RLRR sequence after both Rotations 1 and 2. Alternatively, if participants coded a RLRR dance in allocentric coordinates they should produce a LRLL sequence after Rotation 1 and a RLRR sequence after Rotation 2 (see also Supplemental Movie 1). Any response that did not match one of these two patterns was coded as 'other'. These were either mixed responses (RLRR, LRLL, LRLL) and/or failures to memorize the sequence (RLRR, LRLL, RLRL). Hai||om: 15 boys, 20 girls). German children produced 60% egocentric, 6% allocentric and 34% other responses. Hai||om children produced 20% egocentric, 54% allocentric and 26% other responses. This difference in response distribution is statistically significant (Fisher-exact, p < 0.0001). Extracting 'other' responses, German children produced 91% egocentric and 9% allocentric responses. Hai||om children produced 27% egocentric and 73% allocentric responses. These distributions were significantly different from each other (Fisher-exact, p < 0.0001) and different from chance (50%) in both populations (German: p < 0.0001, binomial test; Hai||om: p < 0.05, binomial test). The frequency of egocentric vs. allocentric responses did not correlate with age (German: p > 0.05, point-biserial; Hai||om: p > 0.05, point-biserial). The absence of an increase of locally dominant responses with age is surprising given previous research documenting an increase in cross-cultural differences with age [5]. Samples of younger children are needed to document the developmental trajectory of this task. In summary, we show that the ways in which we memorize movements of our own body differ in line with culture-specific preferences for how to conceive of spatial relations. These results support the view that, at least in some domains, cultural diversity goes hand in hand with cognitive diversity, and a cross-cultural perspective should play a central part in understanding how variable adult cognition is built from a common cognitive foundation. Acknowledgments We are indebted to students and teachers in Leipzig and at Khomxa Khoeda Primary School. We'd also like to thank the ≠Akhoe Hai||om and the …