Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here cuttlefish, these cephalopods, known for their
Speaker 1: stunning ability to instantly change color and texture to blend
Speaker 1: into their surroundings, have another newly discovered trick. Researchers have
Speaker 1: found that these squidgy creatures can freeze their camouflage palette
Speaker 1: and lock it in place for up to an hour
Speaker 1: without any energy consuming input from their main nervous system.
Speaker 1: That superpower allows them to hold their disguise for long
Speaker 1: periods to avoid being detected and thus to avoid being eaten.
Speaker 1: It also helps them snatch their own prey, as they
Speaker 1: can remain essentially invisible as they lie in wait. The finding,
Speaker 1: published in the journal I Science, not only reveals yet
Speaker 1: another clever strategy of these ocean floor dwelling masters of disguise,
Speaker 1: It also lends further guidance for engineers hoping to borrow
Speaker 1: from the animal's tricks to develop new technologies, such as
Speaker 1: maps that can spring into three dimensions and soft bodied
Speaker 1: robots that could say around a human leg to provide support.
Speaker 1: As with many discoveries, scientists stumbled upon this one nearly
Speaker 1: by accident. The researchers were working at the Marine Biological
Speaker 1: Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. They were trying to trace
Speaker 1: how the cuttlefish's nervous system directs its skin to transform
Speaker 1: its three D texture within seconds to blend into the
Speaker 1: background of say kelp or a rock. When they sliced
Speaker 1: through one of the two main nerves that runs along
Speaker 1: the side of a cuttlefish, they expected the animal would
Speaker 1: lose its camouflage on the corresponding side of that nerve,
Speaker 1: but instead, the three dimensional texture provided by nodes on
Speaker 1: the skin of the cuttlefish, called papela, stayed intact. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Trevor Wardill, co author of the study and
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. He said, it
Speaker 1: was really quite surprising. In fact, when we first saw it. Generally,
Speaker 1: when you cut input to a muscle, it just relaxes
Speaker 1: and that's the end of it. We thought we did
Speaker 1: something wrong, but repeat takes of the procedures showed the
Speaker 1: phenomenon was no fluke. The animals, by the way, we're
Speaker 1: not killed by the procedure and we're a to continue
Speaker 1: swimming and feeding in a tank at the MBL facility,
Speaker 1: the team's finding is the first time this kind of
Speaker 1: lock or catch muscle, as it's known, has been detected
Speaker 1: in any cephalopod. Wardell says they believe it's similar to
Speaker 1: a kind of locking mechanism used by clams and muscles
Speaker 1: to seal shut without expending energy. For the cuttlefish, which,
Speaker 1: as any wild animal, relies on every calorie it consumes
Speaker 1: to survive, having a way to maintain its disguise without
Speaker 1: constantly pumping out energy is an ingenious survival strategy. Like
Speaker 1: an e reader that only uses energy when you turn
Speaker 1: the page, you expend way less energy than with a
Speaker 1: tablet that's constantly refreshing its screen. The researchers suspect that squid,
Speaker 1: which hang out in the ocean's upper water columns, may
Speaker 1: have the same ability. Squid don't transform the texture of
Speaker 1: their skin as cuttlefish do, likely because the increase in
Speaker 1: drag would make such rough surfaces more of a liability
Speaker 1: than an advantage, but these cephalopods blend in by shifting
Speaker 1: the ear doesn't quality of their skin, effectively changing how
Speaker 1: the sun's light reflects off of their bodies. Observations have
Speaker 1: shown that squid even use their eardescence to hypnotize prey
Speaker 1: such as crabs in their sites. In investigating the cuttlefish's neurotransmitters,
Speaker 1: they found striking similarities to neural circuits used by squid
Speaker 1: to manipulate their eridescence, so they suspect squid may have
Speaker 1: a similar ability to lock in a certain air doescn
Speaker 1: to look. Wardell said, the same nerve controls appeared to
Speaker 1: control papela in cuttlefish and aridescence in squid. We suspect
Speaker 1: they must have a common ancestor for this control system,
Speaker 1: but the jury is still out. Word that scientists have
Speaker 1: uncovered yet another neat cephalopod trick is exciting news to
Speaker 1: people like James Pickle, and assistant professor in the Department
Speaker 1: of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Pickle's research group recently borrowed from previous studies on the
Speaker 1: cephalopods to mimic the cuttlefish's quick changing textural camouflage in
Speaker 1: synthetic form using silicon and fiber mesh rings. He envisions
Speaker 1: building on the cuttlefish's dynamic texture changing ability to generate
Speaker 1: a GPS map that could lie flat in a vehicle
Speaker 1: and then, upon command, spring into three dimensions to offer
Speaker 1: a vivid, fully contoured view of the driver's route. Pickle
Speaker 1: also predicts endless medical applications that could borrow from the cephalopod,
Speaker 1: including soft robots that could instantly bend and conform to
Speaker 1: mold around a patient's injury, or even envelope and support
Speaker 1: a beating heart. To accomplish those visions, Pickle foreseas taking
Speaker 1: inspiration and guidance from the cuttlefish and then advancing it.
Speaker 1: He conceives, for example, of developing individual artificial papale that
Speaker 1: could not only be activated or deactivated to match a surrounding,
Speaker 1: but also be prompted to take on a specific shape
Speaker 1: to create a surface that's even more fine tuned. The
Speaker 1: latest research on the cuttle fish was funded by the
Speaker 1: Air Force Office of Scientific Research. War Dale points out
Speaker 1: that the military's interest in the animals goes beyond camouflage.
Speaker 1: He said, they're also interested because of material science. You
Speaker 1: can imagine you can take a very flat structure and
Speaker 1: by activating it form a three dimensional shape. That ability
Speaker 1: could be really helpful if you to transport a structure
Speaker 1: flat to a location and then expanded out. Pickle said
Speaker 1: nature has already begun the design process, so we don't
Speaker 1: have to start at zero, but ultimately we want to
Speaker 1: go beyond what even these amazing animals can do. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Amanda Onion and produced by Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other animal topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet to stuff works dot com