Cuttlefish use Hypnosis to Hunt

cuttlefish are the disco parties of the sea but not the kind of party you would ever want to attend you know because of all the death hi I'm Danielle Defoe and you're watching Animal Logic despite what their name might have you believe cuttlefish are cephalopods not fish making them cousins to the octopus and the squid they get their name from a unique internal shell they possess which is called the cuddle bone it's a porous structure made of aragonite which they use to control their buoyancy the cuttlebone functions similarly to a rigid buoyancy tank containing a gas mixture which allows the cuttlefish to become more or less dense than seawater this gives the cuttlefish a huge advantage the ability to be slightly more or less dense than seawater means that the cuttlefish can raise lower and maintain its position in the ocean with very little effort unlike other sea creatures which may have to spend a great deal of energy to do the same thing there are around 100 species of cuttlefish and they vary in size from 2.5 centimeters long to 90 centimeters long cuttlefish live primarily in warm shallow waters and can be found along almost every coast in the world except for the Americas we don't know for sure why they are absent here but the most likely explanation is that by the time this appeared a family had evolved the warm shallow water bridge between Africa and South America had been severed and the only crossing point was in the northern rim of the Atlantic Basin whose waters were too cold for the cuttlefish to survive in cuttlefish have eight arms and two long tentacles which they shoot out of their pouches to pull prey into their razor-sharp beaks paralyzing them with a strong venom before swallowing them whole their arms and the larger tips of their tentacles are covered in suction discs perfect for snagging prey if they find themselves in a sticky situation like many other cephalopods cuttlefish can deploy eight in order to stun and disorient predators while they make a speedy escape cuttlefish are probably best known for their amazing color-changing abilities their skin is lined with chromatophores which are these light reflecting elasticy ink sacs which can produce different pigments this allows them to change their appearance instantly to match virtually any possible environment they control these chromatophores with lines of muscles that contract or expand to create different pigments we've described this process in a previous episode as like squeezing an ink filled balloon the harder you squeeze the darker the color appears they have roughly 200 chromatophores per square millimeter making them much higher resolution than any television on the market cuttlefish are amazing at blending into their natural environment with the ability to easily disguise themselves as sand rock or coral but even cooler when a cuttlefish is placed in man-made environments they have even been observed camouflaging against a black and white checkered background now despite all this color-changing mastery cuttlefish are colorblind scientists are still unsure as to how they're able to match their colors to their environments but they have a few strong theories one of the most recent is that cuttlefish rapidly focused their eyes at different depths using a property called chromatic blur basically each color has its own wavelength and when light enters their eyes the different wavelengths will Bend causing them to blur making it so the cuttlefish can identify what different colors are based on which sections are blurry this is likely why their pupils resemble a drunken W shape as that would increase the blurring of the different wavelengths other theories are that cuttlefish rely on a separate layer of cells called Luka fors these reflect white light which is the combination of all colors so in shallow water the Luka force will appear white but as the cuttlefish travels deeper into the oceans the colors that reflect darker and more complex it's not just color though they can completely change their texture and shape as well this process utilizes those bands of muscles we mentioned earlier when they need to change shape they will can't wrap their muscles which will force the liquidy Center of those muscles to the surface and little spikes allowing them to take on a multitude of different shapes another mystery of cuddlefish camouflage is that they can do it in complete darkness while the camouflage makes them amazing at hiding they use their color-changing for a lot more like disco fighting when confronting another male rather than physically attacking each other instead they light up and whoever emits the most frightening pattern wins usually a dark wavy pattern over bright stripes terrifying cuttlefish will also employ this strategy when hunting the light of their bodies with hypnotic light show to lure in prey we're distracted by their amazing patterns and then when they're close enough they'll shoot out their tentacles grab their prey and swallow them whole not only that but sometimes males will pretend to be females when a male cuttlefish is courting a female he will display female patterns on the side facing away from her this is to deter rival males tricking them into thinking that it's just two females hanging out and not a male moving in on his territory the cuttlefish mate by the male grabbing the female face-to-face and inserting his spermatophores into a sack just below the mouth with his special tentacle when the mating routine is successful which happens in the spring the female will lay several hundred eggs over the course of a few days shortly after which she dies two months later the eggs will hatch and outcome hundreds of mini cuttlefish there's no real immature stage for cuttlefish and they just hatches miniature versions of the adults but possibly the most interesting thing about cuttlefish is that they can count in the study conducted at Taiwan's National chin-hua University 54:1 month-old cuttlefish were presented with two separate boxes the first contained one shrimp and the second contained five in every single test the cuttlefish would reliably pick the larger number of well it might be easy for them to tell the difference between one shrimp and five they were also capable of distinguishing between closer numbers like three and four always picking the larger meal in order to rule out that the cuttlefish were just choosing the denser group the scientists crowded the smaller number of shrimp into a confined space and gave the larger group more room to move around even in this scenario the cuttlefish were able to figure out which group was larger by actually counting them the ability to choose three shrimp over two shrimp is an amazing ability for a cuttlefish well that level of math is certainly very easy for us there's a lot of math that we find very difficult and we shouldn't this might be because it wasn't explained clearly to you so it 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course offers an enjoyable look into various puzzles that help you improve your understanding intuition and strategic thinking when it comes to algebra that's so helpful if you want to support animal logic and learn a little more about brilliant go to brilliant org slash animal logic you can sign up for free and also the first 200 people who go to that link can get 20% off the annual premiums subscription so what animal should I check out next please let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for new episodes of Animal Logic every other week right here thanks for watching

Channel: Animalogic

Views: 1,732,437

Rating: 4.8899965 out of 5

Keywords: animals, animal, logic, education, show, animalogic, crazy, ugly, weird, gross, beautiful, interesting, facts, animalsfacts, about, information, info, school, research, learn, learning, fun, easy, smart, cuttlefish, octopus, camouflage, camp, master, of, disguise, escape, artist, cuttle, fish, cephalopod, escaping, hiding, camo, attack, hunt, hunting, where

Id: 4IDCpz7bY6I

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Bimpni]

I can't get the yoda bad lip sink voice out of my head with this.

https://youtu.be/ai_BNG9M7eE

[u/uhhh-ok]

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