4 ms·

I'm curious, and haven't seen it mentioned, how mdma affected the octopus's color-changing and signaling abilities. It causes human eyes to dilate, but octopuse

I'm curious, and haven't seen it mentioned, how mdma affected the octopus's color-changing and signaling abilities. It causes human eyes to dilate, but octopuses don't use their eyes for color-changing (many are color-blind). I don't know if there'd be a biochemical change that limited the octopus' ability to change color or a psychological change that changed the octopus's desired signaling. Could be both! Edit: there's a note about the dosing, in the "pharmacology" section. It indicates that higher doses produce unusual skin patterns.

stevenwoo 8y ago
IIRC there was a study on octopuses which blinded newborns and the blinded newborns could not change their color/patterns to match their background, the blind octopuses did what appeared to be random color/patterns so they do need their eyes for something in the process even if its just training. Also the recent Atlantic article talked about too high a MDMA does caused the colors/patterns to go haywire.
- platz 8y ago
  they may not be color blind after all Spectral discrimination in color blind animals via chromatic aberration and pupil shape http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534