Ryuta Nakajima / OIST
–
Squid also have the ability to camouflage.
–
Nationalgeographic.co.id—Squid turns out they can also camouflage changing their colors like octopus and squid. For the first time in the scientific record, a squid has been observed to change its color to blend in with its surroundings.
You may wonder how the scientific community took so long to catch a glimpse of this behavior. But when you see how good these findings are, it becomes easier on your part to understand how no researcher saw them sooner.
Octopuses and cuttlefish were previously believed to be the only cephalopods capable of camouflaging into the surrounding substrate. But a study published in Scientific Reports has now added squid to the list. The discovery took place in a laboratory where the researchers observed animals trying to blend in with the colors of their cages.
“Squids usually hover in the open ocean, but we wanted to know what happens when they move a little closer to a coral reef or if they are chased by a predator to the ocean floor,” explains Ryuta Nakajimaa visiting researcher at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) who was one of the researchers in this study, as reported IFL Science.
Because squid live in the open ocean, this leaves few researchers with the opportunity to study the behavior of squid on the ocean floor. Efforts to keep the squid alive have also prevented many laboratory experiments.
However, in 2017 scientists overcame this problem by cultivating a species of oval squid known locally as Shiro-ika. It is one of three oval squid in the waters of Okinawa, Japan.
As for the ability camouflage squid, the finding appeared as something of a coincidence as is often the case in scientific discoveries. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) are cleaning their tanks that have been covered in a bit of algae.
Ryuta Nakajima / OIST
–
The squid changes color to light.
–
On closer inspection, they noticed that when the squid swam over the algae, it turned darker in color while in other parts of the tank it was lighter in color. It’s as if they change color to try and blend in better, something that has not been officially recognized in squid.
Excited by the coincidental observation, the researchers then conducted a controlled experiment to get a better idea of what was going on. In it, they left half the tank to develop algae while keeping the other half clean and setting up cameras to observe what happened next.
PROMOTED CONTENT
Featured Videos
–
