Cuttlefish Use Humanlike Vision to Choose Camouflage

Here's a tongue-twister for you: Crafty cuttlefish can complete contours to carefully choose camouflage.

What this means, without all the alliteration, is that the visual systems of these squidlike creatures are more sophisticated than previously realized. In fact, cuttlefish can pick the perfect camouflage even without seeing the entirety of what they intend to blend in with, much as humans can translate simple line drawings into meaningful information.

A "disruptive" camouflage pattern used by cuttlefish to blend into "chunky" backgrounds.

CREDIT: Sarah Zylinski, Duke University 

"If you think of our ability to make sense of really basic visual information like cartoons and sketches and children's pictures, we're really good at just using 'edge' information and making sense of it," said Sarah Zylinski, the author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University. "It seems that for cuttlefish, too, edges are really important in making sense of the environment."

Read on: http://www.livescience.com/18483-cuttlefish-vision-camouflage.html