Arata Nakayama

Male Doratosepion andreanum curling its long, iridescent, sexually dimorphic arms in front of its head. CREDIT: Arata Nakayama

Your average female Doratosepion andreanum cuttlefish finds nothing more alluring than the long, extended arms of a male cuttlefish aglow with elaborate patterns made of horizontally and vertically polarized light. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/iJYh50Y8lug

Cuttlefish Literally Twist Light to Attract a Mate, Study Finds Every critter on this planet that relies on a sexual means of reproduction has its own way of luring in a mate – but cuttlefish can do something really special.

“Male Andrea cuttlefish (Doratosepion andreanum) – quite drab to human eyes – use their birefringent arms to literally twist light, creating a highly conspicuous signal precisely tuned to cuttlefish vision.”

#scicomm

www.sciencealert.com/cuttlefish-l...
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Our paper is out from @pnas.org !
We found that cuttlefish use transparent muscle to produce polarized courtship signal.
Birefringence property of muscle makes the transmitted light highly conspicuous for cuttlefish polarization vision.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...