Cuttlefish are masters at mimicking their surroundings, an ability that the US Office of Naval Research is keen to reverse engineer (see video above). Now they're funding Roger Hanlon and his team at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to emulate the way their skin behaves. They're using metamaterials - devices that cause light to bend in strange ways and which have been used to create invisibility cloaks in the laboratory.
In 2008, Hanlon's team discovered that the skin of cuttlefish and other cephalopods contains light-sensing proteins called opsins. These are the same proteins found in eyes and are thought to help their skin function as a distributed seeing organ. Special coloured structures called chromatophores then expand and contract to create different colours and patterns, while iridiophores create coloured patches that look different depending on the viewing angle.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like this video about the secret language of cuttlefish.
In 2008, Hanlon's team discovered that the skin of cuttlefish and other cephalopods contains light-sensing proteins called opsins. These are the same proteins found in eyes and are thought to help their skin function as a distributed seeing organ. Special coloured structures called chromatophores then expand and contract to create different colours and patterns, while iridiophores create coloured patches that look different depending on the viewing angle.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like this video about the secret language of cuttlefish.
Courtesy of New Scientist (Video) and Shameless Screen Grab of Text Courtesy of MacGregor Campbell, consultant on same.
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