I got into this forum by reading a thread about brains and something came up which i thought deserved a thread of its own. Its about camouflage. This is what i think i know (its probably a bit wrong):
Many of the cephs seem to be able to do amazingly complicated things with their skin, like creating optical illusions (for example of false depth to hide the shape of their profile) due to some kind of two layered system of millions of cells in their skin and changing patterns and colours in less than an eye blink.
From videos it seems like they can match the colours of their surroundings with amazing precision.
And to top it all when they are not using this to be more or less invisible they send each other messages with their skin (this bit isn't for this thread)
Controlling all of this involves loads of processing power and a sophisticated brain.
Right now to the point ... In the thread i mentioned before it came up that almost all species (except the firefly octopuss?) are colour blind.
So how the heck do they figure out what colour they are supposed to be?
And if they dont use their eyes to asses their surroundings for this purpose what system do they use?
I am in shock and awe.
(As an asside feel free to put me right if any or all of this is a load of balls but please only if you also have something to add to a discussion about the main question.)
Many of the cephs seem to be able to do amazingly complicated things with their skin, like creating optical illusions (for example of false depth to hide the shape of their profile) due to some kind of two layered system of millions of cells in their skin and changing patterns and colours in less than an eye blink.
From videos it seems like they can match the colours of their surroundings with amazing precision.
And to top it all when they are not using this to be more or less invisible they send each other messages with their skin (this bit isn't for this thread)
Controlling all of this involves loads of processing power and a sophisticated brain.
Right now to the point ... In the thread i mentioned before it came up that almost all species (except the firefly octopuss?) are colour blind.
So how the heck do they figure out what colour they are supposed to be?
And if they dont use their eyes to asses their surroundings for this purpose what system do they use?
I am in shock and awe.
(As an asside feel free to put me right if any or all of this is a load of balls but please only if you also have something to add to a discussion about the main question.)