When it comes to near-invisibility, the world champions may be the octopus and other cephalopods, which can shift their color and texture on cue to become virtually indistinguishable from their surroundings. As an octopus glides across sand, tucks itself between rocks, and wriggles into a clump of seaweed, its color and texture shift continuously, transforming from grainy beige to mottled grey to iridescent green to match different backgrounds. Squid, too, have an uncanny ability to trick the eye, turning shiny, iridescent, and even transparent against the flickering background of underwater light.
How cephalopods achieve this instantaneous camouflage is a mystery that has tantalized humans since at least 350 BCE, when Aristotle made observational notes on the subject, says Leila Deravi, associate professor at Northeastern University, whose BioMaterials Design Group specializes in biomimicry.
“Cephalopods have so many different optical organs in their skin with a lot of different functions,” Deravi says. “They also have really complicated neuromuscular controls that elevate their ability to create dynamic displays in a way that no other animal in nature can do.”
We humans may be able to learn from these creatures. Scientists have recently demonstrated a crop of innovative materials that mimic these biological processes—stretchable, reflective skins, light-refracting color-changing membranes, light-scattering films and fibers, and texture-changing silicon-mesh fabrics with the potential to trick the eye, avoid detection, and seemingly disappear.
Most research is still in the testing and prototype phase as scientists collaborate with engineers and manufacturers to improve scalability and overcome production challenges. But Gorodetsky, an associate professor at the University of California at Irvine, who has pioneered numerous cephalopod-inspired camouflage materials, says interest from manufacturers is high and products could begin to reach consumers within the next decade.
"It feels very slow, but we've made some very significant advances,” he says. “And when you introduce a really exciting technology into the wild, then people will do all sorts of interesting things with it, things we couldn't possibly have imagined.”
Cephalopods have tiny sacs under their skin called chromatophores that contract to
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