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The Watercooler
I want to be a mimic octopus
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 220103" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>I remember at a field trip for Invertebrate Zoology, we caught a Little Dumpling Squid. A cute little crittur. We had him in a rectangular yellow plastic tub and he went completely yellow, it was hard to find him. So we got the little net (he was the size of a thumb) and lifted him out and put him into a red bucket (of course, the bucket and tub were full of seawater). He changed to red in about 20 seconds.</p><p></p><p>Then we put him back into the tub. Yellow in 10 seconds. Then into the bucket. Yellow, red, yellow, red. He got quicker at each change until it was down to less than a second and without a stopwatch we couldn't measure the change.</p><p></p><p>And the colour change was complete. The little thing would almost vanish. We hunted around for plastic with patterns on it to try, but then the professor made us put him back into his rock pool.</p><p></p><p>The other thing we noticed with the colour changing, was the progression of patterns across the squid's body, you could almost see it thinking. </p><p></p><p>So while an octopus is pretty cool at colour changing, squids and cuttlefish are generally even better.</p><p></p><p>Mind you, you could go the other way and be a Blue-Ringed Octopus. They look harmless, they're small and insignificant - until you annoy them, when they get small bright blue rings showing up on their body as a warning that you're about to get lethally bitten; the venom paralyses your breathing muscles and you suffocate within 15 minutes.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 220103, member: 1991"] I remember at a field trip for Invertebrate Zoology, we caught a Little Dumpling Squid. A cute little crittur. We had him in a rectangular yellow plastic tub and he went completely yellow, it was hard to find him. So we got the little net (he was the size of a thumb) and lifted him out and put him into a red bucket (of course, the bucket and tub were full of seawater). He changed to red in about 20 seconds. Then we put him back into the tub. Yellow in 10 seconds. Then into the bucket. Yellow, red, yellow, red. He got quicker at each change until it was down to less than a second and without a stopwatch we couldn't measure the change. And the colour change was complete. The little thing would almost vanish. We hunted around for plastic with patterns on it to try, but then the professor made us put him back into his rock pool. The other thing we noticed with the colour changing, was the progression of patterns across the squid's body, you could almost see it thinking. So while an octopus is pretty cool at colour changing, squids and cuttlefish are generally even better. Mind you, you could go the other way and be a Blue-Ringed Octopus. They look harmless, they're small and insignificant - until you annoy them, when they get small bright blue rings showing up on their body as a warning that you're about to get lethally bitten; the venom paralyses your breathing muscles and you suffocate within 15 minutes. Marg [/QUOTE]
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I want to be a mimic octopus
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