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Now you don't, now you do (see it)

D

DaveChase

SOC-14 1K
http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/08/05/2011/where-s-the-octopus.html

Where is the Octopus?

When marine biologist Roger Hanlon captured the first scene in this video he started screaming. (If you need to see it again, here's the raw footage.) Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, studies camouflage in cephalopods--squid, cuttlefish and octopus. They are masters of optical illusion. These are some of Hanlon's top video picks of sea creatures going in and out of hiding.
Click to expand...

So much we do not know about our own world, that is just amazing.

Now what if in the future living camouflage suits are made (or even high tech ones) that work like these creatures skin?

Dave Chase
 
I had always assumed IMTU that chameleon surface on armor in Striker worked something like this. I say "something like," since it seems from the film that the researcher has the mechanism for the visual output, in texture and color, but not the mechanism for translating the visual input into output. But I have opined that the chameleon surface changed color and pattern to automatically match the background; I think I would be perfectly comfortable adding "texture" to MTU. It makes all the sense in the world to me that future tech(TL12+ ?) would be able to achieve this economically under field conditions.
 
Cool Vid. Thanks. Camoflage by blending into the background is great. I've used it hunting and had deer come right up to me. Once I was scented they were gone. So deer have a defense from visual camoflage by using another sense. The real problem with Hi Tech camo is not visual but camoflaging Infra-red. I'm not sure that can be effectively masked.
 
samuelvss said:
since it seems from the film that the researcher has the mechanism for the visual output, in texture and color, but not the mechanism for translating the visual input into output.
Click to expand...

Exactly! I had to watch without sound as my wife is asleep and I can't find my earbuds, but with every amazing change to blend in, I was wondering about the Input side - how does the creature know what it and its background look like from an outside POV, so as to know what colors to shift, and where?

I suppose this is all instinctive by DNA/RNA, but it makes you go hmmm... perhaps it is cephalopods rather than cetaceans that are our co-existent undersea sentients?
 
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