Cuttlefishes' Cocktail Umbrella Skin

"Consider the cocktail umbrella," suggests Veronique Greenwood of The New York Times in her piece with regard to new knowledge of the camouflaging textural possibilities of cuttlefish skin. 

The cuttlefish is such a wordsmith, such a poet, with its skin. It can strobe. Look into its W-shaped pupils. It can mesmerizes like the cats of Instagram.

"Now imagine you have hundreds of cocktail umbrellas under your skin." Uhhh, okay, for Science we will because, frankly, hundreds -- or even one -- of cocktail umbrellas under the skin sounds like a fever dream like when you're down with norovirus and lying on the linoleum of the bathroom floor because linoleum: so cool, so refreshing.

Cocktail umbrellas: not just for a coconut-based cocktail called the Painkiller, but also a simile for cuttlefish skin papillae.

A cuttlefish's cocktail umbrella skin in action.

"... Biologists at the University of Cambridge and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., have discovered that cuttlefish, masters of camouflage whose shape-shifting talents have fascinated biologists for decades, can lock hundreds of tiny structures under their skin into an upright position, giving themselves a particular texture, then go on their way without expending any energy to keep up the look."


What would you choose if you could have textured skin, papillae like a cuttlefish? The fake-dewy, full-beat face? Don't disappoint the ocean's masters of disguise, humans.  Imagine more interestingly and less Kardashianly! 

We're watching you. 

Think nobbles, warts, uneven growths, and skin tags. Rough edges and swavy lines that blur the line between you and whatever it is you're trying to blend in to: that rock for instance, or a smooth and tawny kelp. Be psychedelic, party people, with your chromatophores, iridophores, leucophores and the tiny umbrellas under your skin.