Hogfish ‘See’ With Their Skin, Even When They’re Dead | The New York Times
was partly supported by an ϲappNeurobiology Post Course Research award to co-author Lydia F. Naughton.
As a marine biologist, knew hogfish could change color to match their surroundings. But as an angler, she noticed something that wasn’t in the textbooks: Hogfish can camouflage even after they’re dead.
When Dr. Schweikert saw a hogfish with a conspicuous spearfishing hole through its body change color to match the texture of a boat’s deck, “it gave me this idea that the skin itself was ‘seeing’ the surrounding environment,” she said.
New research by Dr. Schweikert and her team provides a compelling explanation for how and why hogfish blend into their background, even in the afterlife. In published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, they identified a mysterious new type of cell deep in the hogfish’s skin that might allow the fish not only to monitor its surroundings but also to edit its skin color.
Source: Hogfish ‘See’ With Their Skin, Even When They’re Dead | The New York Times