Incurablog: A Naturalist At Work

6 Nov 2010

This is the same octopus about 30 seconds later. One of the coolest things about the octopus is its ability to change color.  All Cephalopods can do this, but octopuses are by far the best at it.  They have 4 different tools which they use to change color and brightness, these are Chromatophores, Iridophores, Leucophores, and Bioluminescence, which can be activated as a chemical reaction within the octopus’ skin cells. In basic terms, the octopus possesses all the colors in its skin already.  To change, it reveals certain colors by unfolding microscopic sacks in its skin and keeping others tightly shut.  It’s a very complicated, detailed process that happens in several thousandths of a second. If you want the nitty gritty on it, some great info can be found in this PDF on The Cephalopod Page.

This is the same octopus about 30 seconds later.

One of the coolest things about the octopus is its ability to change color.  All Cephalopods can do this, but octopuses are by far the best at it.  They have 4 different tools which they use to change color and brightness, these are Chromatophores, Iridophores, Leucophores, and Bioluminescence, which can be activated as a chemical reaction within the octopus’ skin cells.

In basic terms, the octopus possesses all the colors in its skin already.  To change, it reveals certain colors by unfolding microscopic sacks in its skin and keeping others tightly shut.  It’s a very complicated, detailed process that happens in several thousandths of a second.

If you want the nitty gritty on it, some great info can be found in this PDF on The Cephalopod Page.

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    Ran across this striked terms seemingly straight out of Chapter 9: Higher Vertebrates(Karleskint et al. 3rd ed)  !...
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    Your Kindle’s e-ink screen should be jealous of cephalopods.
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