Scientists Give Cuttlefish 3D Glasses To Prove They Perceive Depth (popsci.com) 37
New submitter wolff000 writes: A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota have shown that cuttlefish see in 3D. They did this by making 3D glasses and then showing the cuttlefish movies of prey. "While cuttlefish wearing glasses is an unexpected sight, a University of Minnesota-led research team built an underwater theater and equipped the cephalopods with specialized 3D glasses to investigate how cuttlefish determine the best distance to strike moving prey," a report says. "The initial act of getting cuttlefish to willingly wear the glasses without trying to take them off and actually watch the screen was tough enough," reports Popular Science. "This process required gluing velcro to the top of its mucus-covered body, placing the glasses on their heads, and keeping the creatures happy and distracted enough to not mess with them (or ink all over the experiment). But when the animals finally focused on the screen, creating an illusion of depth that can only be seen when using binocular vision, they accurately 'hunted' the shrimp on screen."
"This illusion of depth is created by using two different colored images that are seen through the two different lenses, which the brain then calculates the distance between," the report adds. "Even though cuttlefish are colorblind, the colored filters in the glasses send the accurate color from the monitor to the right eye. They only see the image in each eye as a variety of greyscale intensities."
The study has been published in the journal Scientific Advances.
"This illusion of depth is created by using two different colored images that are seen through the two different lenses, which the brain then calculates the distance between," the report adds. "Even though cuttlefish are colorblind, the colored filters in the glasses send the accurate color from the monitor to the right eye. They only see the image in each eye as a variety of greyscale intensities."
The study has been published in the journal Scientific Advances.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Probably not as much as the amount of oxygen wasted in sustaining you.
Capitalism is saved! (Score:5, Funny)
Finally they found customers for all those unsold 3D TV's.
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Uh, I mistook them for caviar.
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Next up - scientists will have velcro fixed laser beams installed on sharks.
When Cuttlefish take over and are torturing us... (Score:3)
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... this study will be cited as one of the reasons.
ObXKCD [xkcd.com]
"Give"? (Score:1)
Colourblind? (Score:4, Interesting)
The current claim is that cephalopods are colour blind because they don't have rods and cones and we can't see how they can see in colour. Thing is octopuses can match their colour to their surroundings, something which is not possible without being able to perceive colour. Cephalopods also signal each other by changing the colour of their skin.
There are now theories on how they can perceive colour given their physiology, e.g.:
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
But the claim that their colour blind clearly leaves open the question of how they successfully perceive colours...
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Immediately I know you don't paint. It's called values. You don't need to see colors =)
Re:Colourblind? (Score:4)
When we talk about color blindness, we're typically referring to sight. "Perception" is a more general term and can include other senses. It's entirely possible that octopuses lack color vision in their eyes but can still detect color using some other means. For instance, maybe they have receptor cells that respond differently based on the wavelength of the light that enters them. We already know there are cells that can react this way because color vision is a thing in other species.
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This seems like a distinction without a difference. Perception of light in the visible spectrum is basically 'sight'. They're not using 'another' sense, they're using a sense of vision that we don't happen to have.
This is the problem when we define things only as they revolve around humans—we back ourselves into these weird corners and we have to say, "no no no, animals aren't INTELLIGENT, they merely ACT in a way that SEEMS intelligent. Only humans are intelligent, so just because birds can learn and
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The current claim is that cephalopods are colour blind because they don't have rods and cones and we can't see how they can see in colour. Thing is octopuses can match their colour to their surroundings, something which is not possible without being able to perceive colour. Cephalopods also signal each other by changing the colour of their skin.
There are now theories on how they can perceive colour given their physiology, e.g.:
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
But the claim that their colour blind clearly leaves open the question of how they successfully perceive colours...
They can perceive light polarization, so I was wondering if that was part of the experimental design.
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I'm not entirely sure that octopus camouflage is based on what they see, I've seen octopus reach their arm into a hole in the reef only for the arm to change colour to match that bit of reef, even though the eye has absolutely no visibility of either the arm, or the bit of the reef it's camouflaging against.
Unless they have some awesome memory and just remember every square centimetre of reef which seems unlikely then I think it must be some other mechanism that allows them to determine colour. There is som
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This gets to the question of what do we mean by "seeing". The camouflaging is too complex for it to be a conscious process based on what the octopus sees with its eyes and then decides to imitate. But it's clearly doing something based on visual information that it receives from the environment - and that could be called some form of seeing even if the photoreceptors involved are distributed across its entire skin and the response is automatic.
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Yep, I'd tend to agree, when I see common octopus and so forth moving across the reef it definitely looks like an almost automatic reaction.
The only thing I'd add is that I think it _can_ be conscious as well even though it isn't normally, the reason I say this is that the mimic octopus for example can go orange and white to pretend to be a lionfish, or black and white to pretend to be a banded sea snake amongst many other creatures it can mimic. It can do this even when no such creature is around, so there
Strange tone (Score:1)
They make it sound like a big deal, but all they've done is confirm what anyone who's spent more than 30 seconds watching cuttlefish could work out for themselves.
I'm not saying that there's no value in confirming "common sense", but you don't have to sound so pleased with yourself.
The colourblind claim seems very unlikely, however. Why do they signal to each other in colour, then? Or would shades of grey be somehow harder than the incredible blaze of colours they use? Maybe they're just setting up another
Funding (Score:1)
How do you get funding for a project like this? I would have loved to be in the room when someone pitched the idea. I am sure everyone was on drugs when the idea came up. Love it :)
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How do you get funding for a project like this? I would have loved to be in the room when someone pitched the idea. I am sure everyone was on drugs when the idea came up. Love it :)
For everyone: Do not miss the chance to hit the link in the article. The cuttlefish with the 3-D specs is tremendous. Might just be the new "deal with it" meme.
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How do you get funding for a project like this?
Grant Proposal, probably:
We're going to stick 3D glasses on a cuttlefish. Some science will happen, but the pictures will be a meme for years. Give us the munnies.
Say something smart... (Score:1)
Memes (Score:2)
I fully expect that image to go viral as prime meme making material.
That cuttlefish looks too cool for school.
Scientists get drunk & argue about science stu (Score:1)
Help? (Score:2)
Ig Nobel Award nominee (Score:2)