The squid and the iPod nano

A picture from the video showing how the colors of the Longfin Inshore squid's skin changes to music.

Squid: not just delicious, but also musical. Scientists at the Woods Hole, Mass., Marine Biological Laboratory made a trippy video, surfaced on CNET, which came about from wanting to explore how the colors of the Longfin Inshore squid's skin changes.

According to the Backyard Brains website, the Longfin Inshore has "three different chromatophore colors: brown, red, and yellow. Each chromatophore has tiny muscles along the circumference of the cell that can contract to reveal the pigment underneath."

And the best way to demonstrate the changing colors: hip-hop. The researchers attached the cephalopod to an electrode hooked up to an iPod nano, and let rip the Cypress Hill tune "Insane in the Brain."

The must-see video is seen through a microscope magnified eight times and zoomed in on the dorsal side of the fin. It was made with the help of Paloma T. Gonzalez-Bellido of Roger Hanlon's Lab in the Marine Resource Center of the Marine Biological Labs.

Viewers have grooved to the squid show more than 50,000 times. Commenters on YouTube like Captain6strings?wrote, "Great. Even invertebrates have a better sense of rhythm than me." Hamneggwich added, "They appear to prefer bass." Click here to watch the video.

The squishy sea creature has also captured the imagination of robotic scientists, who have devised a rubbery robot they've dubbed a squid-bot, which you can see here, inspired by the squid and octopus, that can "crawl, camouflage itself, and hide from infrared cameras."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/squid-ipod-nano-180859091.html

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