for National Geographic News Cuttlefish have been captured on
film exhibiting sophisticated camouflage strategies at night,
according to scientists who are using new high-resolution
cameras to bring these dramatic changes into focus. They are
also using underwater spectrometers to measure color wavelength
to determine how other marine creatures perceive these shifts.
The findings are helping to crack the code of cephalopods,
including cuttlefish, which also employ shape-shifting
strategies to conceal themselves as coral or algae. For the last
nine breeding seasons, Roger Hanlon, senior scientist at the
Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a
National Geographic Society grantee, has closely studied their
camouflage strategies. (National Geographic News is owned by the
National Geographic Society.) His work takes place at a
cuttlefish spawning site—a five-mile (eight-kilometer) stretch
of shallow, flat reef—in Spencer Gulf, Australia. This summer
Hanlon went back to Australia with colla