Cuttlefish are professional camouflagers. They use specialized skin cells called chromatophores, iridophores, and leucophores to change their color, pattern, and texture almost instantaneously. Watching them change their appearance is hard to wrap my head around because of how well they're able to blend in with their surroundings. It looks completely unreal when they do this, which is what makes this natural phenomenon a lot of fun to watch.
Cuttlefish camouflage themselves so that they can hide from predators and stalk their prey before they swoop in to attack. I love watching the cuttlefish make a stripe move across their back, repeatedly. It looks so much like a shadow being cast by something above them, it took me a while to realize this was part of their camouflage abilities.
From YouTube: "Cuttlefish routinely display four distinct types of moving camouflage to disguise themselves while stalking their prey — from looking like a leaf to a coral. Cuttlefish change their whole color and texture in less than the blink of a human eye thanks to color pigments called chromatophores. When Santon travelled to Indonesia to study passing stripe camouflage in Sepia latimanus, he realised the same cuttlefish were also pulling off three other camouflages too. "
See also: Meet a googly-eyed cuttlefish
