Seeing through alien eyes

Of all the families of animals, the cephalopods are probably the strangest. Members of the family, which include cuttlefish, squid and octopus, are famous for being masters of disguise, changing their body colour and even the texture of their skin to camouflage themselves. As figure 1 shows, it can sometimes be hard to tell where a coral outcrop ends and an octopus begins. (For an even more spectacular example, check out www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSq8nghQZqA).

Figure 1: An octopus demonstrating its amazing ability to camouflage itself against the background using both colour and skin texture.

Perhaps the only thing more astonishing than their amazing colour-changing abilities is that cephalopods manage to perform their amazing feats of camouflage without being able to see colour.