Flashing 101 – How Chromatophores Work

Octopus flash, but without the long brown trench-coats. So if you want to make it as a flasher in the marine world, you need a boneless body covered in little bags of coloured pigment. That’s the secret of cephalopods, the group of animals, which the Blue-ringed Octopus belongs to.

The fancy pants name for these little bags of colour are chromatophores and they contain different types of pigments. e.g. melanophores(black), erythrophores (red), xanthophores (yellow), or leucophores (white) when you’re feeling meh… These bags of colour have muscles attached to them, so when the muscles contract the bag opens, and voila…shows the pigment. More muscle contraction equals more colour.

Just when you thought there was too much colour, Blue-rings have an additional layer underneath the chromatophores called iridiophores. They’re essentially little balls of reflective pigments that give the Blue-ring its razzle dazzle and of course it’s distinctive name.

They work by reflecting light. When the muscles over the iridiophore relax, the iridiophore is exposed. Hundreds of these iridiophores get together to form one ring. And just in case you’re going to a trivia night in the near future, these little jet powered jewels have about 60 of these pretty rings, which usually mean they’re pretty angry if you see them.

Here’s when the flashing comes in…these rings can be flashed as quickly as 0.3secs. Basically the flashing occurs by quickly contracting (closing off) and relaxing (opening up) the cover of over the iridiophores. Like a game of ‘peek-a-boo’ or ‘peek-a-blue’ in this case. The bright blue rings are thought to deter predators, warning them ‘I’m as deadly so don’t mess with me.’

Some clever science geeks over at Backyard Brains attached the nerve fibres of a squids chromatophores and played Insane in the Brain by Cypress Hill. The video is ridiculously good.

If you’re not afraid of big words and want to geek it up some more check out this scientific paper.