Octopus Camouflage: The Costly Art of Color Changing

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Octo Outfits

Fitting in can be tough, especially if you’re an octopus. Changing color requires the same amount of energy used just to stay alive, while resting.

• Tiny muscles control chromatophores to change color

• Blue light triggered color change in skin samples

• Metabolic cost measured by change in O₂ consumption

This makes octo-camo-mode one of the animal kingdom’s most “expensive” adaptive traits, not even including the neural effort involved and energy cost of changing skin texture. Almost as difficult as changing out of sweatpants.

Octopuses always have matching socks

Catch-up on science in sweatpants