[HN Gopher] What a crab sees before it gets eaten by a cuttlefish
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What a crab sees before it gets eaten by a cuttlefish
Author : gk1
Score : 61 points
Date : 2025-03-04 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| nouryqt wrote:
| https://archive.is/qancZ
| chiyc wrote:
| I was hoping the article would include a video, but there's a
| great 12 second clip on Matteo Santon's site:
| https://matteosanton.com/research/
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > I was hoping the article would include a video
|
| It has several videos.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Gift link with video, because a static archive doesn't do the
| opening video justice:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/science/cuttlefish-camouf...
| chiyc wrote:
| Thanks! I didn't realize the static archive was missing the
| video. These are better than what's on Santon's site.
| ge96 wrote:
| Damn that was quick the attack
|
| reminds me of Nope
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Here the link to the mp4 file (from my InternetDownloadManager)
|
| https://vp.nyt.com/video/2025/03/03/135038_1_03tb-cuttlefish...
| pkilgore wrote:
| Defector did it better (and included the videos):
| https://defector.com/this-is-the-last-thing-you-see-before-y...
| roughly wrote:
| Defector is fantastic and Sabrina Imbler is an absolute
| treasure - gift link, to share the wealth:
| https://defector.com/this-is-the-last-thing-you-see-before-y...
| junon wrote:
| I find cuttlefish normally very cute but dear god this is
| nightmare fuel.
| alorimer wrote:
| This article is so much better than the original NYT one. Great
| writing and no paywall.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Horrifying, does the video cut suddenly because what happens next
| is too fast for the brain to comprehend before being destroyed?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I thought when the cuttlefish starts blinking, it essentially
| becomes invisible to the crab
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I'm trying to understand how/what the cuttlefish attacks the crag
| with - but I can't tell if the white thing that comes out from
| under its... "Cthluthu mouth-tentacles" is a tongue, a beak, a
| bone, a pincer, a spine, or something else.
|
| Wikipedia's page on cuttlefish anatomy doesn't help,
| unfortunately :/
| adrian_b wrote:
| Cuttlefish, like squid, have 8 short tentacles around the mouth
| plus other 2 much longer tentacles, which are thinner except
| for their ends, which are expanded and which have suckers.
|
| The 2 long tentacles are normally kept coiled and covered by
| the short tentacles, so they are not visible.
|
| When the cuttlefish catches prey, the 2 long tentacles are
| extended together extremely quickly and they attach to the prey
| (much like a chameleon catches insects with its very long
| tongue).
|
| Then the 2 long tentacles are retracted quickly, bringing the
| prey to the mouth that is also hidden between the 8 short
| tentacles. The mouth has a beak, similar to a parrot beak,
| which is used to kill and consume the prey.
|
| See the drawing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuttlefish#/media/File:Seba_mo...
|
| The drawing shows the long tentacles as you could see them on a
| dead cuttlefish. As I have said, in the living cuttlefish you
| can see them only for a fraction of a second, when catching
| prey and bringing it to the mouth.
|
| Also, the 2 long tentacles are extended together, one besides
| the other, they never stay limp and separated, like in the
| drawing or in a dead animal.
| robocat wrote:
| > The drawing shows the long tentacles as you could see them
| on a dead cuttlefish. As I have said, in the living
| cuttlefish you can see them only for a fraction of a second
|
| Yeah: stop drawing dead butterflies
| https://www.emilydamstra.com/please-enough-dead-butterflies/
|
| Once you've seen the pattern, you see the same issue with
| other art. I bought a biology style painting because I liked
| the intentional dead-animal style (both a bird and some
| insects).
| nsbk wrote:
| What amazing creatures! One of the coolest experiences I've lived
| scuba diving was an interaction with a cuttlefish. It would come
| towards me in its alien like swimming style and crazy eyes, while
| pulsating super cool colors, getting very close to my face and
| then quickly swimming back and forth and up and down, speeding up
| and slowing down, like performing some kind of ritual dance.
|
| I think it was trying to hypnotize me, like Futurama's good old
| Hypnotoad. What was the motivation behind, I will always wonder
| z2 wrote:
| The colors understanding is even more remarkable given that
| they are colorblind in the sense that they do not have
| different color cones, and likely rely on a very imperfect
| process of chromatic aberration that they can somehow translate
| back into color.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/how-colorblind-cuttl...
| nsbk wrote:
| Color me impressed. Remarkable indeed, thanks for the link.
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