https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/science/cuttlefish-camouf...
https://vp.nyt.com/video/2025/03/03/135038_1_03tb-cuttlefish...
It's very neat.
yt-dlp --add-metadata "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/science/cuttlefish-camouflage-huting-crabs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U4.y9tH.Aujw5YLUNl3v&smid=url-share" [NYTimesArticle] Extracting URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/science/cuttlefish-camouflage-huting-crabs.html?unlocked_artic...UNl3v&smid=url-share
[NYTimesArticle] cuttlefish-camouflage-huting-crabs: Downloading webpage
ERROR: [NYTimesArticle] cuttlefish-camouflage-huting-crabs: Unable to download webpage: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden (caused by <HTTPError 403: Forbidden>)Time to go over to a real computer I guess.
As one of the plot points, 'aliens' (again, not the Star Trek humanoid kind) eventually 'hack' the human nervous/visual systems through various means (electromagnetic fields, visual patterns, movement types, etc) to hide things in plan sight.
My internal vision of scenes from that book is eerily similar to the videos in the article.
(On aside, would highly recommend Peter Watts to Hacker News audience :)
Echopraxia, the 'sequel' (the events occur at the same time as the events in Blindsight, with a completely different group of characters) has grown on me over time, too. At the very least, it gave me a great appreciation for Portia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider)
But it's fundamentally not about action; in fact, it's hard to see the protagonists having much agency, and certainly no clear goals. It's almost existential in that sense; but based on that beginning, my mind was searching for a story and hero and conclusion.
On the second read, having the framework of the events in my mind, I could focus on the ideas, and it resonated much better. Now I re-read both books semi-regularly (just like Dune and Neuromancer:)
Yea, the crafty Cuttle-fish also has found a cunning manner of
hunting. From her head? grow long slender branches, like locks of
hair, wherewith as with lines she draws and captures fish, prone in
the sand and coiled beneath her shell.
They have seated in their heads a dark muddy fluid blacker than pitch,
a mysterious drug causing a watery cloud, which is their natural
defence against destruction. When fear seizes them, immediately they
discharge the dusky drops thereof and the cloudy fluid stains and
obscures all around the paths of the sea and ruins all the view ; and
they straightway through the turbid waters easily escape man or haply
mightier fish. ... Such are the cunning devices‘ of fishes.I think it was trying to hypnotize me, like Futurama’s good old Hypnotoad. What was the motivation behind, I will always wonder
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-colorblind-cuttl...
It raises an interesting question about the limits of evolutionary adaptation, and how the evolutionary competition reaches a stable equilibrium.
An aside, but the recent book by Dawkins "The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie" is fascinating and explains how you can look at an animal and understand the environment of its ancestors. You can read it as a kind of massive autobiography of the species and detect waypoints on its evolutionary journey.
Wikipedia’s page on cuttlefish anatomy doesn’t help, unfortunately :/
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.
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).
Clearly this is the inspiration for the design of the mindflayers.
I can relate to that crab.
