Spot the octopus! Amazing moment marine creature camouflages itself against a reef is captured on video
A diver in the Caribbean saw an octopus reveal itself against a coral reef. The cephalopod springs into view as it changes its tone and texture. Shown is an image of the octopus - if you can spot it. Octopuses can camouflage themselves to hide from predators. They use thousands of colour-changing cells known as chromatophores. But how they do this is unknown exactly - as they are 'colour blind'.
Spot the octopus! Amazing moment marine creature camouflages itself against a reef is captured on video
- A diver in the Caribbean saw an octopus reveal itself against a coral reef
- The cephalopod springs into view as it changes its tone and texture
- Octopuses can camouflage themselves to hide from predators
- They use thousands of colour-changing cells known as chromatophores
- But how they do this is unknown exactly - as they are 'colour blind'
The moment an octopus camouflaged itself against a coral reef to become invisible has been revealed in an amazing video.
The footage shows what appears to be just a lifeless reef area.
But as the diver approaches, the octopus suddenly jumps into view as it deactivates its ‘cloaking mechanism’.
Seeing is believing: It might be hard
to believe, but there is actually an octopus hidden in this video. The
still is from a video that shows the cephalopod changing the tone and
texture of its skin to unmatch from its surroundings and reveal itself
to a diver
The footage was captured by Jonathan Gordon in the Caribbean.
‘I
dove down to have a look at the shell that you can see just under where
the octopus appears and as I approached the octopus came out of
hiding,’ he said.
I had literally no idea he was there until I was about a metre away.’
Octopuses are one of a few marine creatures that can camouflage themselves underwater; others include the cuttlefish and squid.
The
cephalopod - a mollusc with its arms attached to its head - can not
only change the tone of its skin to match its surroundings, but also its
texture to blend in.
Incredibly,
they are able to do all this despite being colour blind. Scientists
still aren’t quite sure how they know what the colour of the object
their hiding against is.
It
may be they are able to detect slight contrasts in colours by filtering
it in their body, or proteins in their skin and eyes known as opsins
may be the cause of its amazing ability.
Perhaps,
still, it is just a case of natural selection - it might be that some
have evolved the ability to match certain colours, and thus are able to
survive.
As the video progresses, the octopus
starts to become visible. ‘I dove down to have a look at the shell that
you can see just under where the octopus appears and as I approached the
octopus came out of hiding,’ said Jonathan Gordon, the diver who
captured the footage
Octopuses camouflage themselves to
hide from predators, and when they reveal themselves they can increase
their size (shown) to make them look even more intimidating
To
change the colour of its skin, an octopus has thousands of
colour-changing cells known as chromatophores beneath the surface of its
skin.
These contain an elastic sac full of pigment, the colour of which can be altered.
The sacs can also be expanded or contracted by an array of nerves, and when it is expanded the colours become more visible.
By
controlling the size of projections on its skin known as papillae, an
octopus can also change the texture of its skin from bumps to spikes.
This means they can not only match the colour of a reef, but its texture as well.
They
attach themselves to solid objects to camouflage and, if discovered,
they ‘puff’ themselves up in size to make them look more intimidating.
One
of the reasons octopuses camouflage themselves is to hide from
predators. If threatened, they can also spray ink in the face of their
attacker before making a quick getaway.
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