The ability to delay gratification has long been seen as a mark of intelligence. The famous “marshmallow test” placed children in front of a single treat and offered a simple bargain: eat it now, or wait and get two. Those who resisted often went on to succeed academically, socially, even financially. Patience was not just a virtue; it was predictive.

Yet it turns out this trait is not uniquely human. In a Cambridge experiment, cuttlefish were given a similar choice — a mediocre meal immediately or a shrimp, their favorite, if they waited. They waited. In fact, they sometimes endured two full minutes of temptation, holding out for the better prize. Even more remarkable: those same cuttlefish who delayed showed sharper learning in other tests. Intelligence, it seems, wears many disguises.

This was the first time this kind of patience was found in an invertebrate. Chimpanzees, crows and parrots have long been known to delay satisfaction in order to save food for later.

What makes this discovery all the more striking is that cuttlefish are solitary creatures. They do not form schools, build social bonds, or raise their young. Their patience evolved for the hunt — the advantage of waiting for the better prey, of holding still in camouflage until the perfect strike. Their foresight is purely individual, a strategy of survival.

Humans, by contrast, require patience not just for survival but for flourishing. Patience is what allows us to build together — to trust one another, to undertake projects that span generations, to cultivate communities and civilizations. Our ancestors planted trees whose shade they would never sit under and built cathedrals that took centuries to complete, as an extension of delayed satisfaction – a commitment towards a future society they would never enjoy.

But in our age of instant messages, instant news, and instant outrage, society no longer prizes waiting. Why suffer a moment of discomfort when a thousand distractions beckon from a glowing screen? Why wrestle with the silence of patience when clicks deliver dopamine now? Where our forebears saw wisdom in restraint, we see boredom. Where they saw the dignity of discipline, we see inconvenience.

Patience as a virtue is not just about self-control; it is the very condition that allows for deep thought and deep bonds. To abandon patience is to abdicate our gifts of reflection, to trade away the ability to imagine futures greater than the present moment. In our hurry, we become more animalistic, lunging at whatever stimulus flashes before us. And unlike the cuttlefish, whose patience serves survival, we squander patience’s higher purpose — the power to build not only buildings that endure, but bonds that sustain.

Are we in the process of losing our basic survival skills – in both the present and future? Are we burying our ability to ponder to be led like dolts to an unsuspecting danger?

The irony is sharp: solitary cuttlefish wait with foresight, while humans — the only creature who truly needs patience to hold communities together — are in danger of forgetting how. Delayed gratification once built civilizations. Instant gratification now tears at their foundations.

The cuttlefish reminds us that intelligence is not about speed but foresight. A creature with no interest in faith, family, or future still knows the wisdom of waiting. The question that remains is whether we do.