Polarised Vision in Celphlapods

[Doug207]

Hi everyone

I'm doing an Fdsc in marine conservation and one of my classmates came up with an interesting question which my lecture couldn't actualy answer which was

"what is the advantage for celphlapods to see with polarised vision"

[rattusnorvegicus]

Cephalopods are so interesting. I found this paper Cuttlefish use polarization sensitivity in predation on silvery fish Original Research Article, Vision Research, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2000, Pages 71-75
Nadav Shashar, Roland Hagan, Jean G. Boal, Roger T. Hanlon

"Cephalopods are sensitive to the linear polarization characteristics of light. To examine if this polarization sensitivity plays a role in the predatory behavior of cuttlefish, we examined the preference of Sepia officinalis when presented with fish whose polarization reflection was greatly reduced versus fish whose polarization reflection was not affected. Cuttlefish preyed preferably on fish with normal polarization reflection over fish that did not reflect linearly polarized light (n24, x217.3, PB0.0001), implying that polarization sensitivity is used during predation. We suggest that polarization vision is used to break the countershading camouflage of light-reflecting silvery fish."

As far as I'm aware, literature on cephalopods is an area still establishing.

[Darby]

It's not the literature - there just aren't a lot of people doing such research.