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Common Cuttlefish — printable fact sheet
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Common Cuttlefish
Sepia officinalis
The cuttlefish is one of the great paradoxes in animal vision: it is a master of colour camouflage and is almost certainly colourblind. It has a single type of photoreceptor, which ought to make colour matching impossible — and yet it reproduces the hue of its background with un…
Did you know?
- Despite their name, cuttlefish are not fish at all—they are mollusks, closely related to squid and octopuses.
- Cuttlefish are almost certainly colourblind, yet match the colour of their surroundings with startling precision. Their W-shaped pupil and colour-splitting optics may let them "read" colour by which wavelength comes into focus. Their skin is under direct neural control, so a complete pattern change takes a fraction of a second. Small males mimic females — colour, posture and all — to sneak past guarding rivals.
What I learned
Draw the common cuttlefish
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