Cuddly creatures with more than two arms
Cuddly creatures with more than two arms
The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) is a small, deep-sea cephalopod found throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world. It's easy to imagine the vampire squid as a nightmarish predator. It lurks in the eternal midnight of the deep sea, has a dark red body, huge blue eyes, and a cloak-like web that stretches between its eight arms.
Found in Montana’s Bear Gulch limestone formation, the unassuming 12cm (4.72inch) fossil was subsequently donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in 1988. And there it lay quietly in a drawer in the Invertebrate Palaeontology collection for decades while scientists fussed over fossil sharks and other creatures from the site.
Until, one day, palaeontologists noticed the fossil’s 10 limbs and took a closer look.
In general, the cephalopod’s sense of where its body is in space is quite poor, so this complex instinctive behavior may act to protect the arms from undetected predators nearby, which may mistake the tips of the octopus’s arms as fish or worms.
That octopus arms react to light has long been known. Its skin is covered in chromatophores, pigment-filled organs that change color when light falls upon them. They are behind the octopus’s color-changing camouflage ability.
Scientists used to think that only mammals and birds experienced different sleep states. More recent research, however, has revealed some reptiles and cuttlefish -- another cephalopod and relative of the octopus -- show non-REM and REM-like sleep.
A new study has found that the octopus has ‘quiet’ and ‘active sleep’, with different episode duration and periodicity, and experiences active sleep after a long episode of quiet sleep.
Using a modified version of the Stanford marshmallow test, researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (The University of Chicago) discovered that cuttlefish had the ability to delay gratification for a better reward—and those that were able to do it for a longer duration possessed better cognitive learning abilities.
The findings, which demonstrated the link between self-control and intelligence, was published recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal.
Inspired by this, the engineers at Rutgers University–New Brunswick have developed a 3D-printed smart gel that changes shape when exposed to light, as well as a 3D-printed stretchy material that can reveal colours when the light changes.
A paper on the research has been published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Called "active displacement" of fish, this behaviour usually takes place during collaborative hunting efforts that both the octopus and fish engage in.
In such a situation with multiple parties, a complex network is created where investment and payoff can be unbalanced, and this gives rise to partner control mechanism, said marine biologist Eduardo Sampaio from the University of Lisbon in Portugal. A paper on this behaviour was published in the Ecology journal.
Based on a recent study, researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory have found that the flamboyant cuttlefish doesn't spend the day flashing its vibrant colours for our cameras.
Rather, it spends almost all its time camouflaged, in dull, subdued (safe!) colouration.
Scientists from the Field Museum in Chicago, USA recently discovered that Pacific warty octopuses don’t all have the same appearance, nor do they all live at the same ocean depth.
Their findings, which was published in the Bulletin of Marine Science, indicated that the bumpier the octopus’ skin was, the deeper in the ocean they would be found.
In their research, the team examined 50 Pacific warty octopuses from the Northeast Pacific Ocean, as well as specimens from the University of Miami Marine Laboratory and the California Academy of Sciences.
Most years, Southern California on the US west coast is the site of a special marine life aggregation, treating locals to one of the most unique dives in the world. Hundreds of thousands of market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) swim into recreational dive depths to mate and lay an expansive canvas of egg baskets (collections of eggs) across the sandy substrate.
To diagnose gum disease, dentists insert a thin metal probe between the tooth and gum to measure the amount of gum that has shrunk back from the tooth. The depth to which the tool can be inserted indicates the severity of the gum disease.
Apart from being invasive and uncomfortable, this method of diagnosis is sometimes painful for the patient. In addition, the measurements are viable, as the probe can measure only one portion of the tooth at a time.
Enter Jesse Jokerst.
