Clues to camouflage
For years, camera makers have sought ways to avoid chromatic aberration — the color fringes that occur when various wavelengths of light focus at different distances behind a lens. But where photographers see a problem, some sea creatures see possibility. A new study, co-authored by the father-and-son team of Christopher and Alexander Stubbs, suggests that chromatic aberration may explain how cephalopods — the class of animals that includes squid, octopi, and cuttlefish — can demonstrate such remarkable camouflage abilities despite being able to see only in black and white. The research is described in a July 4 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “There’s been a longstanding paradox that [cephalopods] manifest these vivid chromatic behaviors,” said Christopher Stubbs, the Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy. “That would lead any observer, even a layperson, to conclude that they must be able to deduce things about coloration.” But what...