{"id":6813,"date":"2013-02-13T10:53:47","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T18:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=6813"},"modified":"2020-10-21T17:28:25","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T00:28:25","slug":"whats-that-on-the-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2013\/02\/13\/whats-that-on-the-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s that on the rock?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t

By Michelle Marraffini, Invertebrate Zoology Lab<\/h3>\n
\"Can
What do you see on the rock?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What's that on the rock?<\/p>\n

The invertebrate zoology class took a field trip to Asilomar State Beach last week to look for cool creatures. \u00a0Professor Jon Geller encouraged us to turn over rocks looking for flatworms, the topic of this week's lecture. \u00a0As I overturned one rock I noticed something quickly hunker down. \u00a0It was this tiny octopus that tried to\u00a0camouflage\u00a0itself with the rock. \u00a0 An octopus's boneless body is well suited for changing its shape and its ability to mimic other animals, algae, and rocks or sand can be quite impressive. \u00a0Check out this video of an octopus\u00a0camouflaging\u00a0itself ('Where's the Octopus?<\/a>'). \u00a0These\u00a0extraordinary\u00a0animals are different from other\u00a0camouflaging\u00a0animals because they not only change their color and shadow but they also change the texture of their skin to match their background and they do all of this by sight!<\/p>\n

Their very kein eyes detect the object they wish to look like and control over 30 million\u00a0chromatograms (color producing cells)\u00a0and papilla (cause the three\u00a0dimensional shape of the skin). \u00a0Octopus's do this while color blind which\u00a0mystifies\u00a0scientists.<\/p>\n

\"Look<\/a>
Small octopus found at Asilomar State Beach hiding under a rock at low tide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This octopus I found is likely a Pacific red octopus (Octopus reubescens)<\/i>, though it swam away before I could get a good look (no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post). \u00a0This is so far the coolest creature I have seen in the intertidal. \u00a0Get outside and see what you can find!<\/p>\n

\"Taking<\/a>
My little buddy swimming away.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Marraffini, Invertebrate Zoology Lab What’s that on the rock? The invertebrate zoology class took a field trip to Asilomar State Beach last week to look for cool creatures. \u00a0Professor Jon Geller encouraged us to turn over rocks looking for flatworms, the topic of this week’s lecture. \u00a0As I overturned one rock I noticed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-6813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drop-inblog","tag-invertebrates"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20849,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions\/20849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}