A team of scientists in Japan Take a video of the squid wandering around it, Very similar to octopus and squid Act. When It is known that squid in the wild change colorScientists conducted experiments to confirm this camouflage capacity in the laboratory.
Like other cephalopods, cuttlefish have thousands of chromatophores – cells that change color – under their skin. Chromatophores can swell and contract They appear darker or lighter, allowing the animal to Connect with each other and blend into their environment.
The type of oval squid the team studied, Sepioteuthis الدرس LessonsThis type of environmental camouflage has never been observed before. A team from the Okinawa Graduate University Institute of Science and Technology kept the oval squid in captivity and watched the animals change colors to match. their tank. That search first published Last week in Scientific Reports.
Ryota Nakajima, a biologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth and lead author of the paper, said at the Okinawa Institute. release. “If substrate is important for squid to avoid predation, this suggests that increasing or decreasing squid populations is more related to coral health than we thought.”
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There are several reasons why scientists didn’t know the size of the squid in advance Colors change with their surroundings. Squid are difficult to breed in captivity, Not like an octopus Squid, squid tend to live in the high seas, meaning Not much substrate to mix.
The oval squid species the team studied never showed evidence of changing color with their environment. According to Michael Fekion, invertebrate zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution and NOAA, “Related species in the Atlantic, Sepioteuthis sepioidea [the Caribbean reef squid]frequently observed, There are many descriptions of their behavior, chromatic patterns, etc., but almost entirely depend on field observations. ”
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“As far as I know, this is the first of its kind [of camouflage] Viccione said it was done under controlled laboratory conditions in a phone call.
In its native habitat off the coast of Okinawa, the squid is oval They are light in color, reflecting the sunlight flowing across the surface of the ocean. But the squid, placed in the tank, is able to imitate local surfaces.
When the researcher was cleaning the squid Inside the tank, they noticed that the animals’ colors changed depending on whether they were hovering over the algae-covered side of the tank or the clean side..
The researchers then set up an experiment so they could document this color change, by keeping one side of the tank covered in algae and the other side clean. on algae side, Cephalopods turn dark green, but when Swim to the clean sideIt becomes semi-transparent.
“This effect is absolutely amazing. Zdeněk Lajbner, a biologist at the Okinawa Institute and co-author of the paper, said at the Institute: release. “This shows how little we know about these magnificent animals.”
often overwhelm him Intelligent And Patient’s cousinSome squids have finally revealed their secrets, at least in captivity. How this behavior might differ in the wild is another question that should be explored.
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