Two mysteries: color blind camouflage and 2 dimensional perceptions generating 3 dimensional representations

At the nexus of the two visual perspectives (the beholder and the beheld) is the problem of color blind camouflage. Cuttlefish have been shown to be colorblind in experiments but are still able to color match their surroundings remarkably (Chiaoa, et al. 2011). Just how they do this is a central problem for Hanlon and his lab. Cuttlefish predators have remarkable visual systems, some can see polarized light, and many have better color vision than humans (a notoriously visual animal) (Hanlon 2011). Comparatively cuttlefish have impaired vision, yet they have to be able to extract sufficient information from the visual scene to implement a useful camo pattern.

Octopuses too have an impoverished visual system, compared to some of their predators. For example, they are unable to perceive in three dimensions. Yet their bodies take on complex three-dimensional shapes in order to match not only the color of their background but also the shape. While it is widely understood that two dimensional visual systems can solve some three dimensional problems, the detail and complexity of the body shapes taken by the octopus make it hard to understand how the animal is able to extract relevant 2-dimensional queues from a visual scene and implement them as 3-dimensional action plans for its body.

Suggested citation
LaTourelle, Jonathan Jacob. 2015. "The Neurobiology of Vision at the MBL". MBL History Project digital exhibit. http://history.archives.mbl.edu/exploring/exhibits/neurobiology-vision-mbl
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Note: There is no science without a scientist, and so the author has attempted to maintain the essential truth of that—namely that at each stage of the scientific process there is a person looking at evidence and making judgments. However there is almost no personal biography, and much of the professional biography of each author has been abridged dramatically. In spite of this, the reader should keep in mind that each of these individuals were complicated people who share at least a job description. George Wald once said, “A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy”. Each of these individuals had a scientific ethic, as well as a body of scientific work, and where possible, the author of each section has attempted to not forget the romanticism of the spirit of investigation, or the fact that many of these people were excited by a simple truth—after all, they were seeing things no one else had seen before. That majesty can be easy to forget if you are an outsider new to the complexities of visual physiology, but these scientists never forgot it.

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