The Cuttlefish, a Master of Camouflage, Reveals a New Trick | Hacker News Reader

The Cuttlefish, a Master of Camouflage, Reveals a New Trick

nytimes.com

172 pointsdnetesn31 comments

Understated here is that cuttlefish manage to match their surrounding's color while being color-blind, in the sense of lacking color receptors. It's thought that their pupils have such wild shapes because they can somehow use chromatic aberration blur patterns to distinguish colors. See http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/01/1524578113

I already thought cuttlefish were awesome but reading that they are using chromatic aberration to distinguish colors blows my mind! Thanks for sharing!

TIL cuttlefish not seeing magenta is more interesting than many animals' not being able to see magenta.

Most aquatic animals see longer wavelength colors poorly because water filters out that light just a few meters deep. Below the surface everything looks shades of blue or gray.

* looks to us :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F came to mind

I'm not an expert, but this seems like an area of debate. See a reply to that article:

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/45/E6908

On a nature documentary whose name I don't recall [1], they showed a great example of a cuttlefish disguising himself.

There was a larger than average male with a harem of females, and there was a smaller than average male that wanted to mate with the females, but was nowhere near strong enough to beat the big male in combat.

So the small male took advantage of his small size. He took on the appearance of a female, and approached the large male as a female would.

The large male was fooled, and accepted the small male into the harem. As the large male continued vigilantly watching for approaching challengers, the little male mated with all the harem females right under the big male.

[1] I almost certainly saw it on one of the Nat Geo channels, one of the Discovery channels, BBC America, or PBS.

Edit: a bit of Googling turned it up. It was in the BBC documentary series "Life" from 2009. It's this segment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005bpsl

I misremembered a little. The large male only had one female, not a harem, when the small male joined.

I have it on my machine at home I'm quite sure, will post the name later.

PBS.NOVA.2007.Cuttlefish.Kings.of.Camouflage

That was in the recent (and incredible) Blue Planet II from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4tfgmTgfJHlJpvvMnRl...

"Sneaky male" is often the term for such strategies in nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_mating_strategy

That same thing was also in Blue Planet II.

In 4k/HDR it's bloody amazing, the color changing of the cuttlefish is ridiculous.

The cuttlefish is my favourite creature to come across while scuba diving. I've seen them settle down on the seabed next to some vegetation and just disappear. It turns green and fuzzy, and sends up little tendrils that look like seagrass and semi-translucent blobs of algae. Even knowing that it's there, it's usually impossible to see that it's a cuttlefish. YouTube videos don't do it justice; I've never found any videos that show the level of camouflage it can do. (The video in the article, though, is amazing in the level of detail shown.)

The best part is if you remain almost motionless, sometimes their curiosity overcomes their fear and they come up to check you out. I've been more struck by intelligence in an animal than with cuttlefish.

I did a couple of dives out of Whyalla, South Australia, which, at the time, about twenty years ago, I was told, was the only known cuttlefish breeding ground.

I must have seen about a squillion cuttlefish and cuttlefish eggs.

Cuttlefish are amazing -- tiny Cthulhus of the deep, as they drive their prey mad before devouring it (https://youtu.be/YcpzubpIhtI). Learning more about their ruthlessly efficient means of camouflage and deception just makes them more awe-inspiring.

Ditto the rest of the cephalopod family, the ingenuity demonstrated by octopuses is well-documented but endlessly fascinating!

Octopus brains are substantially different from mammalian, reptile, or even bird brains, having more innervation in its arms than its head, and no need for a brain-body map like we have -- and yet octopuses not only display intelligence, but social behavior that's recognizable to us as affection or hostility. An octopus will nuzzle the hand of a familiar, well-liked human with its tentacles, or squirt water at a despised human from its tank. If deep-sea creatures are the closest we've seen to aliens, then the behavior of octopuses suggests we may be able to establish social common ground with intelligent extraterrestrials should we ever encounter them.

Amazing. I knew they could change colour, but to think that they can even adjust the texture of of their skin to match surrounding coral... consider me mind-blown.

Peter Godfrey-Smith also writes about this in Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Great read, highly recommend!

I saw this while riding the train to Boston with my daughter who is a volunteer educator at New England Aquarium. They have dwarf cuttlefish on display there now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwOi7HpHtQ

Here are True Facts about the Cuttlefish

a recent episode of the "in our time" podcast discussed these creatures. and they are prominent in blue planet 2 as well.

Off topic but cuttlefish bones can be used for casting jewelry/other metal objects.

Interesting. While we're off topic, they're also delicious. Slightly sweeter than squid and I find less prone to going tough. They take a little bit of preparation but you get quite a good size meal out of a single one. As a bonus they grow quickly so are a fairly low impact species to take.

Yeah, I can't eat anything that smart, like this or an octopus.

Is it smart though? As in, is it actually thinking or is it simply acting on impulse/reflex/instinct?

I wouldn't eat them either, but clearly they have no problem with eating their own kind.

They are also used as a calcium supplement for animals:

"Today, cuttlebones are commonly used as calcium-rich dietary supplements for caged birds, chinchillas, hermit crabs, reptiles, shrimp, and snails. It is not for human consumption"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuttlebone#Human_uses

I think it's valid to point out that this reaction was caused by cutting one of it's nerves that controlled skin color.

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