This just completely blew my mind. Okay, let’s get this out there first: squids do not possess ears. However, the same electrical impulses created when audio is converted to an electrical signal, like what happens inside a microphone, can actually be applied to tissues. Joe Hanson over on It’s OK to be Smart explains this better than I ever will. The video above comes from the team over at Backyard Brains that did some tests at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA where a squid was hooked up to a special iPod playing Cypress Hill’s 1993 hit Insane in the Brain. Via YouTube:
The video is a view through an 8x microscope zoomed in on the dorsal side of the caudal fin of the squid. We used a suction electrode to stimulate the fin nerve. Chromatophores are pigmeted cells that come in 3 colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore is lined with up to 16 muscles that contract to reveal their color.A number of incredibly smart people even wrote a scholarly paper on the phenomenon aptly titled Neural Control of Tuneable Skin Iridescence in Squid! (via brainpicker)
