Tag: cephalopod

nubbsgalore:

despite its colourful appearance, the hawaiian bobtail squid (euprymna scolopes) has the ability to render itself invisible to predators from bellow, thanks to a luminescent bacteria, vibrio fischeri, which inhabits a special light organ in the squid’s mantle. 

the bacteria, which are fed a sugar and amino acid solution by the squid, produce luciferase, an enzyme that facilitates a biochemical reaction that produces light.

the nocturnal squid, who can control the amount of light produced by the bacteria, are able to ensure that they are not silhouetted when passing through the light of the moon or the stars by emitting an equal amount of light on their underside to that which hits them from above.

photos by mattias ormestad, jackson wong, jose martín piñatel, david slater, todd bretl

sea-nerd-adventures:

It’s been too long since I’ve posted an octo update, (or any update, really), and this feisty little lady has been up to some pretty cool things!

We recently got a set of hamster tubes to use for octo enrichment, and the set had a little blue lookout tower in it. Surprising everyone, our octo turned this sweet blue green color to match it! I had seen our reef octopus before her with colors like this occasionally, but never a common octopus. We also don’t have a lot of blue in that habitat, so she had no reason to be blue until her enrichment was blue! (She tends to be more rock/sand colored)

So, long story short: our lil kraken is still amazing and surprising and the best animal ever 🐙💜