Octopus Eyes Are Crazier Than We Imagined
by Maddie Stone
The latest fascinating cephalopod insights come to us from a father/son team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University, who’ve learned that weirdly-shaped pupils may allow cephalopods to distinguish colors differently from any other animals we know of. The discovery is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
Boring animals like humans and birds see color using a combination of light-receptive cone cells, each of which contains pigments that are sensitive to a different part of the visual spectrum. It’s only by combining information from different cone cells that colors can be properly distinguished. Hence, when a person lacks a particular type of cone, he’s considered colorblind.
Cephalopods only have a single type of light receptor, which means they should not be able to distinguish color at all. And yet, many octopuses, squids and cuttlefish have color-changing skin that’s used for elaborate camouflage ruses and courtship rituals. Clearly, these colorblind animals have become masters of color manipulation. How? …
(read more: Gizmodo)
photographs: NOAA, Roy Caldwell, and Klaus Stiefel
Baby octopus photo by Chris is Playa Del Carmen, Mexico
The “head” of an octopus is actually its body—a bellows-like sac called the mantle, which houses its organs. To breathe, the octopus opens its mantle wide and expels water over the gills and out a muscular siphon.
Red Octopus at the West Seattle Low Tide Pokemon Adventure I had today with the Seattle Aquarium Beach Naturalists. #vscocam #creature #lowtide #constellationpark #pnw #summer #vsco #discover #friends #critter #octo #tako #octopus #yay (at Constellation Park)
Key West Octopus (by W. Tipton)
