Do cephalopods use background matching or colour disruptive camouflage?

Cephalopods are part of the mollusc class which includes octopi, squid, nautilus and cuttlefish (Hanlon et al., 2009). In this blog post I will be discussing cuttlefish, octopi and squid, as they are the masters of camouflage. Please note, to make this article read fluidly I will group them as cephalopods, but be mindful I am not referring to nautilus.

Pictures of the same cuttlefish seconds apart

For this blog I wanted to find out if cephalopods use background matching or colour disruptive camouflage. As you may remember I discussed background matching a few weeks ago. If you don’t remember or can’t be bothered going back and reading, I’ll just tell you that background matching is when the organism’s colouring matches its background (Caro, 2005). Disruptive colouration (which I also discussed a couple of weeks ago) is the use of contrasting markings of an organism to break up the body edge and to confuse prey or predator (Skelhorn & Rowe, 2016).

To answer the question of what type of camouflage cephalopods use, I must delve into how they do it first. I will do my best to explain this but even after reading many research papers I am still trying to get my head around it. Perhaps it is not as complex as I make out but just purely mind-blowing!

Cephalopods have these organs in their upper most dermis (skin) called chromatophores (Williams et al., 2019). Chromatophores are tiny sacs that contain pigment and are contracted or relaxed by radial muscles (Hanlon, 2009). They can change shape and size extremely quickly allowing cephalopods to seemingly appear and disappear within seconds (Allen et al., 2009). Cephalopods also have light reflective cells which can reflect almost any colour and can even appear to be fluorescent (Williams et al., 2019).

Octopus chromatophores in skin

Cephalopods use papillae to change the texture of their skin (Allen et al., 2009). There is much to be learnt about the papillae, but they are believed to use muscular hydrostatic mechanisms (Allen et al., 2009). The movement of the papillae can make the skin go from smooth to spikey in just over two seconds (Hanlon, 2007). This helps cephalopods mimic textures of seaweed, rocks, sand and so much more in the sea.

Now, to go back to our question - do cephalopods use background matching or colour disruptive camouflage? They use both! Cephalopods change their colouration to whatever the situation asks for and can do it in a matter of seconds (Hanlon, 2009). I am going to leave you with a few clips about cephalopods using their colourations as predators and prey. I truly believe that cephalopods are the kings and queens of camouflage.

A cuttlefish hypnotising a crab 

Colour changing octopus

References

Allen J., Mathger L., Barbosa A., & Hanlon R. (2009). Cuttlefish Use Visual Cues to Control Three-Dimenional Skin Papillae for Camouflage. Journal of Comparative Physiology. 195(6), 547-555.

Caro T. (2005) The Adaptive Significance of Coloration in Mammals. BioScience. 55(2), 125-136).

Hanlon R. (2007). Cephalopod Dynamic Camouflage. Current Biology. 17(11), R400-R404.

Hanlon R., Chiao C., Mathger L., Barbosa A., Buresch K., & Chubb C. (2009). Cephalopod dynamic Camouflage: Bridging the Continuum Between Background Matching and Disruptive Coloration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 364, 429-437.

Skelhorn J., & Rowe C. (2016). Cognition and the Evolution of Camouflage. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 283(1825), 20152890.

Williams T., Senft S., Yeo J., Martin-Martinez F., Kuzirian A., Martin C., BiBona C., Chen C., Dinneen S., Nguyen H., Gomes C., Rosenthal J., MacManes M., Chu F., Buehler M., Hanlon R., & Deravi L. (2019). Dynamic Pigmentary and Structural Coloration Within Cephalopod Chromatophore Organs. Nature Communications. 10, 1-15.