Insane in the Chromatophores

Insane in the Chromatophores

The secret of camouflage ability in squid. 

by: Aria Ratmandanu

 

The whole skin of a squid is a living TV Screen. The pixels is a tiny bag of coloured pigment. There are three different colours, they are red, yellow and brown. But as with TV pixels the three types are independently controlled, to vary the patterns of colour over the skin surface.

The pixels are much bigger than the TV screen ones. They're bag of pigment. How are they controlled ? Each bag lies inside an organ called a chromatophore. There are muscle cells attached to the chromatophore. The muscle are arranged like the arms of the starfish, except that there are about twenty arms instead of only five. When the muscle contract, they stretch the walls of the bag so that a larger area of pigment is splayed out and the chromatophore takes on the colour of the pigment. When the muscle relax, the bags shrinks to a dot because of its elastic walls, so its colour become invisible from a distance. Because the colour change is controlled by muscle, and the musclesby nerves, its fast, about one-fifth of a second to change.

The muscle contractions tugging at the chromatophores are controlled by by cells that in the brain.
Theoretically, if we could hook up squid's brain's cells to a computer, we could play a movies in its skin. Dr. Roger Hanlon and some colleagues took a dead squid and hook up a nerve in its fin to an iPod. The wire pulsed electricity in time with the music's strong beat, and this stimulated the chromatophores muscles. The result was pretty crazy, like a disco light show. Watch the video below : Insane in the Chromatophores.