Secrets of the Flamboyant Cuttlefish’s Display

[n2doc]

Flamboyant Cuttlefish. Photo: James Kilfiger, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.

The flamboyant cuttlefish (Metasepia tullbergi) earned its moniker for a reason. Like many cephalopods, this cuttlefish can change its appearance with remarkable flexibility and speed. Sometimes it displays bright colors; other times, it camouflages itself to seamlessly blend into the background.

In a new study, Gilles Laurent, Michael Kuba, Tamar Gutnick, and Andres Laan of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research analyzed one of the flamboyant cuttlefish’s more extraordinary displays. Known as the passing cloud display, it consists of dark bands of color moving in waves across the animal’s body. While other cephalopods also use passing cloud displays, in the flamboyant cuttlefish they are especially frequent and complex.

Cephalopod skin is covered with elastic sacs of pigment called chromatophores. Neural activation of the muscles surrounding these cells relaxes and contracts them, changing their size to create different color patterns.

Laurent, Kuba, Gutnick, and Laan found that each side of the flamboyant cuttlefish’s body (or mantle) contains four regions over which the dark bands of color travel during a passing cloud display. The waves of color can propagate in a different direction in each region. The four regions are not always active at the same time, but those regions that are show synchronized activity.

more

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/secrets-of-the-flamboyant-cuttlefishs-display/

[LuvNewcastle]

1. They taste good, too.

[KT2000]

2. Wow! That is amazing. n/t

[jeffrey_pdx]

3. True facts about the cuttlefish.