Cephalopod dynamic camouflage

A synthesis of field and laboratory work on how cephalopods change appearance, classifying the enormous variety of observed body patterns and asking how many distinct camouflage strategies they actually represent.

Studied in

Octopus vulgaris, Sepia officinalis

Sample size

review of field and laboratory observations

The variety resolves into a small number of pattern classes — broadly uniform, mottled and disruptive — deployed according to the visual background rather than matched to it in detail.

• A review, so it inherits the limitations of the studies it draws on.
• Pattern classification involves judgement about where one category ends and another begins.
• How the animal selects a pattern without colour vision remains unresolved.

• Octopuses

  Octopuses do not copy their background — they pick from a few pattern strategies

• Dynamic camouflage

  Cuttlefish and octopuses are not photocopying their surroundings. They assemble patterns from a limited set of components into a modest repertoire, chosen to suit the background rather than reproduced from it.

• Cuttlefish

  Cuttlefish produce convincing colour matches and, by the standard measurement, cannot see colour — their camouflage response tracks brightness and ignores hue. Nobody has settled how they manage it.