“A colorblind genius that paints itself any color in the rainbow.”

The cuttlefish is a soft, hovering blob of pure cleverage that may be the best-dressed liar in the ocean. Its skin is a living screen of millions of pigment sacs and reflective cells, letting it ripple through dazzling color shows and complex patterns in a fraction of a second — to hypnotize prey, threaten rivals, or simply vanish against the seafloor. The punchline: it's almost certainly colorblind, somehow matching colors it can't even see, possibly by tasting light with its weirdly W-shaped pupils. Behind that show is a startlingly large brain. Smaller males have been caught disguising themselves as females to sneak past bigger guards, and the animals can pass memory and self-control tests that stump human toddlers. It's an invertebrate, technically, but it's running a genuinely impressive operation.

Scientific name

Sepia officinalis

Size

Forearm-length (up to ~45 cm).

Habitat

Coastal seafloors and reefs across the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Diet

Crabs, shrimp, and small fish, ambushed in a flash.

Conservation

LC · Least Concern

Picnic threat level

Picnic threat: low, but it could perfectly disguise itself as a deviled egg.

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Learn more →