We know squid brains are big. And disarmingly effective. But it turns out they’re even more dazzlingly complex than we’d realized. The latest surprise comes from a squid’s skin. Or, more specifically, the dizzying combinations of speckles, stripes, and colors that a squid can cycle through in mere seconds—a phenomenon Wired explores in details. [...]
These changes of decor can get incredibly complex, with one body part going polka-dotted at the same time as another is lined with stripes—and still another turned solid black. This lets squid send mixed messages (literally). For instance, while a squid might threaten a male competitor on its right side, its left side might be sweet-talking a potential mate. [...]
Based on our knowledge of our own brains, you’d expect a certain location within the optic lobe to control the color and pattern of a specific body part. However, Chuan-Chin Chiao, a neuroscientist at Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University, experimented on the brain of an oval squid—and found that it didn’t operate that way at all, as Wired details. Instead of corresponding to body parts, different regions of the optic lobe, when stimulated, generated different combinations of the 14 skin patterns lighting up various squid body parts. If Chiao’s hypothesis is right, it would explain how squids can flash through one patchwork of colors and patterns to another, and another, and another—all within seconds.
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