Craft squids employ several different camouflaging displays while hunting their prey. New paper Published in the journal Ecology. This involves mimicking benign ocean objects like leaves and corals, or flashing dark stripes on the body. And it appears that individual squids have chosen different preferences for hunting displays for different environments.
It is well known that squid and several other cephaloids can rapidly change skin tone thanks to its unique structure. As previously reported, squid skin is translucent and characterized by an outer layer of pigment cells Chromatophore That controlled light absorption. Each chromatophore is attached to muscle fibers lined up on the surface of the skin, which are connected to nerve fibers. Stimulating these nerves with electrical pulses and contracting the muscles is a simple problem. And as the muscles are pulling in different directions, the cells change color along with the pigmented area. When cells contract, the pigmented area also shrinks.
Beneath the chromatophore is another layer of ylidophore. Unlike chromatophores, ylidephores are not pigment-based, but are examples of structural colours similar to butterfly wing crystals. However, squid’s iridophores are dynamic rather than static. It can be adjusted to reflect light of various wavelengths. a 2012 paper This dynamically tunable structural colour of the ylidefore suggested that it was linked to a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. The two layers work together to produce the unique optical properties of squid skin.
And there is leukemia, which resembles ylidefore, but they look white as they scatter the full spectrum of light. They usually contain reflective proteins that aggregate into nanoparticles, scattering light rather than being absorbed or transmitted directly. Leukemia is mostly seen in squid and octopus, but there are several female squid from the genus sepioteathi It involves leukemia, which can be “tuned” to scatter only light at a certain wavelength. When cells pass light with little scattering, more light scatters makes the cells opaque and more obvious.
Scientists learned it in 2023 process This makes squid producing camouflage patterns much more complicated than scientists previously thought. Specifically, squid easily adapted skin patterns to a variety of backgrounds, whether natural or artificial. And creatures do not follow the same path of transition each time, and often pause. In other words, contrary to previous assumptions, feedback appears to be important to the process, with squid modifying the patterns to better match the background.
