We’ve written before about how octopuses and cuttlefish change colour to provide their famous camouflage.
Back in May, we reported on a paper by University of California, Santa Barbara, scientists that explained how the skin of the California two-spot octopus contains a type of light-sensitive protein that allows the skin to “see” light with the same mechanism used in its eyes, even without input from the octopus’ central nervous system.
Now, this video from PBS’s Deep Look series reports on similar findings by Stanford researchers. They found that changing colour for an octopus or squid is a little like breathing to us – they can choose to do it, or do it automatically.
Originally published by Cosmos as Shedding light on how the squid changes colour
Bill Condie
Bill Condie is a science journalist based in Adelaide, Australia.
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