Albert Kok / WikipediaDe everlipvis
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 22:35
American biologists have made a remarkable discovery in the hogfish, which, like a chameleon, can change color depending on the environment in which it swims.
How does that fish know if it has adapted well to its environment so that it goes unnoticed by enemies? According to biologist Lorian Schweikert of the University of North Carolina, the fish use their skin to do this.
Light-sensitive proteins beneath color-changing cells allow the fish to “take a picture of their own skin from the inside out.” The cells can, in a way, tell the fish what its skin looks like because it can’t bend over to look.
The hogfish, also known as the capitaine, is found in the Caribbean, South Florida, and the tropical western Atlantic.
The fish has fourteen spines and eleven soft rays on its back. Its head is shaped like a pig’s head, which is why it is called hogfish in English.
According to Schweikert, the hogfish’s skin doesn’t exactly function like an eye, but rather is a “sensory feedback mechanism that allows the fish to follow its own skin as it changes color.” It is striking that this mechanism continues to function when the fish is dead. Even then it continues to adapt its color to its surroundings.
The hogfish, according to Schweikert, could be the first example of a vertebrate with specialized light-sensing cells located outside the central nervous system.
Schweikert and her colleagues are now conducting further research to better understand exactly what the light-detecting skin cells are and how the fish perceive them. Nevertheless, they are already excited about their discovery. Because how color-changing animals can determine what color they are has been a mystery until now.
Possibly the mechanism of the hogfish to check its color also applies to other fish and perhaps even to other animals.
2023-08-22 20:35:00
#Colorchanging #hogfish #skin
