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Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens

122 points| ronald_raygun | 9 years ago |news.berkeley.edu

31 comments

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[+] DavidWanjiru|9 years ago|reply
For a moment there, that headline had me thinking that school kids who happen to be weird have colorful gardens and are showing these gardens to octopuses.
[+] passive|9 years ago|reply
I'm not going to click it, and just keep believing this.
[+] anigbrowl|9 years ago|reply
[cephalopds] are colorblind – their eyes see only black and white – but their weirdly shaped pupils may allow them to detect color

Do PR people ever think about the awfulness of the drivel they write? I see the point the author is trying to make here but writing self-contradictory sentences is not the wright approach.

  Cephalopods, long thought to be color-blind, may in fact be able to detect color....

  Although the retinas of cephalopods cannot detect different colors, new research suggests they may be able to detect color another way.

  ...etc.
[+] kkylin|9 years ago|reply
Wow. This is cool. For anyone else who's interested, the full paper is at http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full and supplemental information (including movies) at http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2016/07/01/1524578113.DCSu... .
[+] roryisok|9 years ago|reply
Took me a second. "why would students be showing a garden to an octopus?"

Oh, and I love your username op. My brother started a comic with that same title, never did finish it

[+] mastazi|9 years ago|reply
> why would students be showing a garden to an octopus?

Well according to the title those students are weird... :-)

[+] sixstringtheory|9 years ago|reply
Went to many a punk show at the Nancy Raygun in Richmond, VA. Great little venue.
[+] techninja42|9 years ago|reply
What a beautiful hack by nature. I wonder if you could create a lens with a similarly shaped pupil/iris and see the chromatic aberration in a black and white camera correctly focused on the output. Would make for a fun weekend project :)
[+] elihu|9 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to develop software that can colorize an image based on multiple images with different focus.
[+] kirykl|9 years ago|reply
Maybe possible to use this technique on space probes to capture true colors in a single channel, saving on data transfer
[+] smoyer|9 years ago|reply
The black and white film is still only going to record black and white images ... The "may be able to judge color" part of the theory requires "processing". You might however be able to digitize your black and white photo and "colorized" it.
[+] 11thEarlOfMar|9 years ago|reply
Can't let a post on octopi go by without re-posting this amazing out-of-the-water predation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fZu-1bt6Y

[+] faitswulff|9 years ago|reply
Fascinating tidbit for those who check the comments first:

> Intriguingly, using chromatic aberration to detect color is more computationally intensive than other types of color vision, such as our own, and likely requires a lot of brainpower, Stubbs said. This may explain, in part, why cephalopods are the most intelligent invertebrates on Earth.

[+] koliber|9 years ago|reply
Can someone tell me if I am understanding this right? If not, can you clarify?

This is how I understood it:

They don't have different cones cells for detecting color. Instead, their pupil is more like a slit, causing light to be diffracted, not unlike a prism. Because of the diffraction, different wavelengths of light fall on different areas of the retina. Their brain is mapped as such that they understand the location of the light as the color. Moving the eye around helps them refine this information.

[+] amelius|9 years ago|reply
How did they establish that octopuses are colorblind in the first place?

Wouldn't a behavioral test immediately reveal that they are not colorblind?

I'm curious about the scientific process here.

[+] corecoder|9 years ago|reply
They looked at the retina, and at its lack of color cones.
[+] kristopolous|9 years ago|reply
I wonder what their color range is; if I'm reading right, this isn't necessarily the same spectrum range that we are accustomed to.