by Trying to catch a meal in the animal world can generate a whole series of challenges. You first have to find the prey and then catch it without moving the attempt and losing your dinner. In the Cuttlefish World, researchers have identified four impressive camouflage techniques that use this week animals to help them pursue prey and end a meal.
Sea fish have an impressive control over their appearance and can manipulate the colors and even textures of their bodies. Broadclub Cuttlefish (Sepia Latimanus) Usually catch their prey with their two longer arms or use all four arm pairs to get their prey. In the approach to this phase, researchers identified four different displays, each of which is very different from the others in terms of color, body position and texture.
“The first time I saw these hunting displays, it was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” said Study author Dr. Matteo Santon on the New York Times.
Outside the islands of Kri and Mansuar in East Indonesia, the team kept the squid with a prey of living crabs and observed them on the approach. They also filmed the behavior with a GoPro to compare between individuals. During the 234 displays that were seen, the authors discovered that the squid had four main yacht displays they called, pass, pass, branching coral and pulse display.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyst846L7P0
With the leaf attack, the lateral arms are stretched aside, the squid is olive green or white colored and the approach is extremely slow. In the attack of the passing stripe, the body position is comparable to a leaf, but the squid can pass a black stripe along his body and the prey is approaching.
In the branching coral attack, “the two central arm pairs were raised, and the lateral arm couple stretched thorso-slaterally, occasionally kept smooth or with normal nods in the arms”, the authors write in the paper. The color of the squid remains the same in the attack, but has pale or dark color with dark spots.
In the final display type, known as Pulse, the two side arms come together to form a cone, while two central arms are flooded. The body color is gray with dark pulses that go from behind the head to the ends of the raised arms.
The team also discovered that the squid mixed their displays, switched from one form to another during the approach and suggests that some of the displays can also help hide the squid for predators.
The team discovered that men and women would just as likely use all four displays, except for the leaf display that the females used 13 percent more often. They also discovered that when hunting certain prey such as purple mangrove crab, the squid used more often branched coral display than when hunting for spotted scratching. This suggests that the squid adjusts their progress to specific prey.
“When using the leaf display, squid take on a greenish color and perform slow dorso-ventral swimming scilling during the approach, reminiscent of the movement of a mangrove leaf worn by the flow,” write the authors, which suggests that the squid mimines the movement of the magazine in an extra level of their camouflage.
In general, this study not only shows the remarkable level of camouflage options within this species, but also suggests a high level of cognitive capacity when making decisions regarding their hunting strategies.
The paper is published in Ecology.
