Comment on Nina's Review

Nina Byers’s review of the article “Cloaks of Invisibility, Switched in a Flash” was particularly interesting and well-written.  It was very informative, clear, and straight to the point.  One well-presented aspect was in describing what exactly the enigmatic title meant.  While cloaks of invisibility are still not possible for human use, two species of cephalopod have been discovered which can switch from transparency to being completely opaque in less than a second.  This is a highly-evolved camouflage reaction used for protection.  This is another well-presented  aspect of the review: Nina addresses why exactly this oddity evolved. These two cephalopods are predated on by hatchet-fish and deep-sea dragonfish, which hunt by seeing the silhouettes of fish and the reflection of light off of fish respectively.  By evolving this interesting defense mechanism, these cephalopods can protect themselves from both thypes of fish very quickly.  A final well-presented aspect of the review is that it describes how exactly the camouflage works.  By twitching black pigment sacs, the cephalopods appear transparent, and by expanding them into disks they can become opaque. 

            An area which could be improved in the review was that it did not go into detail as to how transparent the cephalopods actually become.  Being completely see-through sounds too fantastical to be an actual ability, but by using the word transparent it seems as if these creatures must be at least somewhat see-through.  A second area which could be improved upon, is that the review states this discovery is important to further understanding evolution, but does not explain why.  Although the discovery of these organisms is very interesting and may very well be important to the understanding of evolution, the review does not explain why that is so.

            The most impressive fact in the review was that creatures like this exist at all.  The ability to switch from being completely clear to completely dark does not sound possible.  Until now, such amazing camouflage abilities were the stuff of fairy tales.  Personally, I am just excited and happy that such interesting creatures can actually exist outside of a storybook.