Because every color is a different wavelength, it’s possible to have a lens focused in such a way that only one color at a time is clear and others are blurry.
So it seems that the eyes of cephalopods rapidly “sweep” across every possible level of focus. It might all look like different shades of grey to them, but in just an instant, their powerful brain registers exactly which shades of grey come clear at exactly which levels of focus and tells the skin which chromatophores to switch on and off to match that shade as close as possible. *focusfocusfocusfocusblurblurblurblurblurblur* I don’t know what these other assholes are seeing but THESE greys in THIS situation sure seem to confuse them”
Ever wonder what life is like as a cephalopod aquarist?
Our Tentacles exhibition is the largest living collection on cephalopods on display in the world—and keeping up with its tenants is colossal (squid) amount of work! Take a look behind the scenes with our Squid Squad and find out what it takes to care for our cuttle puddle of cephalopods.
It takes an ink-redible amount of work and knowledge to raise baby cephalopods. But as our cephalopod aquarists will tell you, it’s worth it!
Cuttlefishare masters at catching their prey. They use mimicry, camouflage, and flashing (to “hypnotize” and confuse). Cuttlefish prefer live prey, so it’s important to be able to effectively grab live crabs in a way that won’t cause them to lose an arm every time they want a meal.
Cephalopods are superlative and sneaky assassins, using countless tricks to catch unsuspecting critters.
Sign up for our texting program when you’re here to catch these hunters in action in our Tentacles exhibit. Text the word “experience” to 56512 to find out when our exhibits are being fed!
Those things growing out of this giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama) are its skin papillae. It can extend and retract its papillae at will, helping it alter its texture to better blend in with its surroundings.
Both papillae expression and color change are controlled by visual, not tactile, cues. This means that these guys don’t need to actually touchanything to decide on their camouflage strategy.
Just by looking, they are clever enough to decide what sort of color, pattern, and texture is needed to virtually disappear.
Cuttlefish have such an incredible capacity for mimicry that isn’t talked about enough. Not only can they pretend to be a different sex in order to get sneaky matings with females who are already being guarded by a male, and change their skin color for camouflage, now they’re apparently pretending to be crabs.
What’s interesting is that when I went to look up pharoah cuttlefish mimicry, the only result I got was this behavior that potentially looks like hermit crab mimicry (the paper on it wouldn’t confirm for sure that’s what the behavior was, just that it seems likely) I couldn’t find evidence of cuttlefish mimicking any other species. So it’s just hermit crabs, I guess.
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