Since Friday’s cephalopod was a repeat (sorry, it’s such a lovely picture that it caught my eye again), here’s another to compensate.
Sepia pharaonis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
Sunday cephalopod: there really are two cuttlefish here
Sepia pharaonis
Speaking of cuttlefish, it seems they are colorblind.
http://www.mbl.edu/inside/what/news/features/feature_cuttlefish.html
There’s short movie clip showing a cuttlefish doing a camouflage color change.
And speaking of camouflage, I think that the critter shown isn’t trying to hide at all, but is displaying a zebra stripe mating display. I think. For a while I thought it might be an example of a Turing pattern, but colleagues in my (marine biology) lab poured scorn on that idea. Pretty, ‘though.
I’ve tried a couple of times, but I STILL can’t see the second one. If there’s no bigger pic, can anyone tell me where it is? It’s driving me nuts.
The male is covering the female — she’s underneath him, feeling the tickle of a tentacle.
Do young cuttlefish have to be able to seem their own skin, in order to learn which cameflouge pattern best matches the background? Seems to me that’s an interesting question. I’m not sure how you would test it.
Hello Kuttlefish!