Sunspot Drop Won’t Cause Global Cooling

Sunspot Drop Won’t Cause Global Cooling: "


News that solar activity might fizzle for a few decades has prompted talk of a new “Little Ice Age,” even a quick fix for global warming. But that’s just not going to happen.

The cooling impact of the last prolonged solar lull “was probably only a couple tenths of a degree Celsius,” said climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University. “It’s a tiny blip on the radar screen if you’re looking at the driving factors behind climate change.”

The possibility of imminent solar dormancy was raised by reports from the ongoing American Astronomical Society meeting of fading sunspots and dips in the sun’s magnetic patterns. Those are considered portents of solar inactivity, suggesting that the next solar minimum — a natural downturn in activity — would be especially pronounced, perhaps lasting for decades.

The frozen Thames, circa 1677. Artist unknown, Wikimedia Commons.

When that last happened, between the mid-17th and early 18th centuries, northern Europe experienced a period of unusually cold weather. Known as the Maunder Minimum, or more conversationally as the Little Ice Age, it’s a period historicized by accounts of ice skating on the Thames and seasonal inns built on Baltic Sea ice.

Press accounts of the new solar reports played up the Maunder Minimum angle, hinting that it might happen again. Some even implied that global warming might be counteracted.

In fact, the meaning of the latest sunspot reports is still being debated, as Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth has chronicled. But even if they really do portend a decades-long solar lull, studies already point to a minimal effect on climate.

Most Little Ice Age cooling appears to have been the result of coincidentally high volcanic activity that cloaked Earth in sunlight-blocking soot. As for the sun, a study published in 2001 in Science found that reduced solar activity produced a cooling effect of about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In other estimates, the cooling is even more insignificant.

‘Global mean temperatures in the year 2100 would most likely be diminished by about 0.1°C.’

More recently, in a 2010 Geophysical Research Letters study, Georg Fuelner and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research asked the question directly: What would happen if Earth experienced another 70-year-long solar minimum?

The answer can be seen in the image at the top of this post, which estimates the temperature difference between a solar minimum future under “middle-of-the-road” climate scenarios and the Maunder Minimum. In a nutshell: It’s going to be much, much hotter in the future, solar minimum or not.

“Global mean temperatures in the year 2100 would most likely be diminished by about 0.1°C,” wrote Rahmstorf and Fuelner. And even if their models and assumptions were so uncertain as to be off by a factor of three, that still puts the cooling at just 0.3 degrees Celsius, or about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Compared to the end-of-century global average temperature increase predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — about 5 degrees Fahrenheit under mid-range scenarios, and 7 degrees Fahrenheit under more realistic scenarios — solar cooling would be negligible.

“A new Maunder‐type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions,” concluded Rahmstorf and Fuelner.

“The example I like to use is that greenhouse warming right now is the equivalent of 2 watts of power illuminating every square meter of the Earth’s surface. It’s like a Christmas tree light over every square meter. By mid-century, it will be closer to 4 watts,” said Mann, who was a co-author on that 2001 Science paper. “The maximum impact factor of the sun is 0.2 watts per meter squared.”

At most, a prolonged solar minimum would temporarily offset rising global temperatures for a few years, perhaps a couple decades, said NASA climatologist David Rind, who has also studied Maunder Minimum dynamics. But “when the sunspots return, the additional energy will cause additional warming,” he said.

“To point to this as something that could in any way ameliorate greenhouse gas warming is folly,” said Mann.

Image: Average global temperature differences, 2071-2100 and 1681-1710, assuming another period of Maunder Minimum-like solar inactivity. (Feulner & Rahmstorf, Geophysical Research Letters)

See Also:

• Climate Change Wilts Farming Yields
• Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose …
• Climate Change Could Choke Oceans for 100000 Years
• Climate Change Caused Radical North Sea Shift
• East Coast Fish Die-Offs Linked to Extreme Cold Snap
• Secrets of Stradivarius Explained

"

Windows 8: The Beginning of the End of Windows (Michael Mace/Mobile Opportunity)

Michael Mace / Mobile Opportunity:

I have a longstanding rule for evaluating new tech products: Don't judge anything by the demo. I've seen far too many product previews that hid fundamental flaws in usability. Until you can touch and play with the product on your own, seeing the little details of fit and performance that make it delightful or frustrating, you won't really know if it's worth your time.

So it's far too early to make any judgments on Windows 8, which Microsoft just previewed (link). There are an incredible number of ways it could go wrong.

But. I've got to say, this is the first time in years that I've been deeply intrigued by something Microsoft announced. Not just because it looks cool (it does), but because I think it shows clever business strategy on Microsoft's part. And I can't even remember the last time I used the phrase "clever business strategy" and Microsoft in the same sentence.

The announcement also has immense implications for the rest of the industry. Whether or not Windows 8 is a financial success for Microsoft, we've now crossed a critical threshold. The old Windows of mice and icons is officially obsolete. That resets the playing field for everybody in computing.


The slow death of Windows

When Netscape first made the web important in personal computing, Microsoft responded by rapidly evolving Internet Explorer. That response was broadly viewed as successful, but in retrospect maybe it was too successful for Microsoft's good. It let the company go back to harvesting money from its Windows + Office monopoly, feeling pretty secure from potential challengers.

Meanwhile, the focus of application innovation slipped away from Windows, toward web apps. New software was developed first on the Internet, rather than on Windows. Over time, Windows became more and more a legacy thing we kept because we needed backward compatibility, rather than a part of the next generation of computing.

Windows was our past, the web was our future.

This process was made very starkly clear by the iPad. Although the iPad is not a comprehensive PC replacement, and Apple has been very careful to say that, it is a very good PC replacement for certain tasks. And it has probably started to eat a hole in sales of notebook PCs, a very ominous change that should scare the daylights out of the people in Redmond.

To me, Windows 8 is the first sensible response by Microsoft to the strategic challenge it faces from the web. It apparently introduces not just a new user interface, but also a new programming model that embraces web technologies and integrates them with Windows resources and APIs.

I need to see a lot more on that programming model: How will Windows web apps really work, which APIs are available, how will these apps be sold and discovered, and on and on. Ars Technica had a great question: What's the visual paradigm for apps that want to look modern but aren't appropriate for touch? (link):

"There are plenty of applications that are too complex and fiddly to ever be at home with a touch-first interface—consider a software development environment, or a fully-featured office suite. Leaving these stuck in a Windows 7 ghetto doesn't seem like a good long-term option."

But at least Microsoft is finally trying. The alternative was to cling to the past and be a stationary target, gradually eaten away by the iPad and Android and Chrome and smartphones and whatever else the web world cooked up.


The risk

There's a downside in all of this for Microsoft. By embracing the next generation of computing, Microsoft is obsoleting its current products.

You can see this effect just by watching the Windows 8 preview video (link). The new interface and its applications look fluid and roomy and relaxing to use. The interface is smooth and playful. And then they switch into Windows compatibility mode and there's an explosion of crapola on the screen. It almost made me gag.

John Gruber says this is a fundamental flaw in Microsoft's approach (link), as does Jason Snell at Macworld (link). I understand what they're saying -- when you're working on a new paradigm, you don't want to be distracted by any baggage from the old one. But for Microsoft, this is about more than just responding to the iPad. It's the company's next computing paradigm, a change as fundamental as the transition from DOS to Windows. The thing that made the Windows transition work was that Microsoft protected the customers' investment in old applications and data. You could keep using your old DOS applications while you gradually got used to Windows.

So users will have an interesting choice. Apple, with iOS, is making a clean break with the past. So are Chrome and Web OS. Microsoft is trying to cherry-pick the best of iOS and WebOS and Chrome, and wrap that into a product that's also backward-compatible. Let's see, cleaner design versus backward compatible...where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, Mac vs. Windows, 1990. I was at Apple at the time, and backward compatibility was the magic key that kept the PC installed base loyal. I'm sure Microsoft knows that, and they're looking to run the same play again. Since they are not likely to create something even slicker than Apple, I think they're absolutely right to maintain compatibility in their new product. It's really their only choice.

Old Windows apps running inside Windows 8 do look awful. But so did DOS inside Windows 3.0, and that didn't stop people from buying it.

Microsoft will pay a serious price for the Windows 8 announcement. Most PC users haven't yet upgraded to Windows 7, and some Microsoft execs have been bragging in public about the revenue to come from upgrading all of those people. Forget about it. I think you'd be an idiot to buy Windows 7 for an existing PC when you know Windows 8 is coming. It would be like buying a horse-drawn carriage after Ford announced the Model T.

So there is a risk (actually, a likelihood) that Microsoft will stall its own revenue this year. I'm surprised that it is previewing Windows 8 so early, when it won't even have more details until its developer conference in September. And who knows when the new OS will actually ship; ArsTechnica guesses it'll be the second half of 2012, which usually means December. That means we're in for up to 18 months of vaporware. If I had to pick a fundamental flaw in Microsoft's approach, I'd point to that 18 month delay. It's way too long. It should have been nine months maximum.

Hey Microsoft, does no one there remember Osborne Computer (link)? You can destroy a tech company by pre-announcing your next generation product before it ships. Luckily for Microsoft, most PC companies don't have an immediate alternative to Windows, so it won't collapse the way Osborne did. I assume the folks at Microsoft were spooked by the competition and decided they needed to preannounce Windows 8 now to prevent Google Chrome from gaining momentum, or iOS from taking over, or some other alternative like Web OS emerging, now that HP is talking about licensing it (link). But the long delay raises the risks to WIndows. Microsoft has now bet its future on Windows 8. If it's late, or if it's not a great experience, that could turn into a very serious financial issue for the company, and it could invite customers to switch to something else. A few years from now we could look back at this as Microsoft's death rattle.

Or as its new beginning.


What it means to the rest of us

The history of platform transitions is that they are huge opportunities for developers. They reset the playing field for apps and devices. Look at the history: The leaders in DOS applications (Lotus, Word Perfect, etc) were second rate in GUI software. The leaders in GUI apps (Adobe, Microsoft, etc) were not dominant in the web. It's actually very rare for a software company that was successful in the old paradigm to transfer that success to the new one. Similar turnover has happened in hardware transitions (for example, Compaq rode the Intel 386 chip to prominence over IBM in PCs). And yes, there is a hardware transition as part of Windows 8, since it will now support ARM chips, and you'll want a touchscreen to really take advantage of it.

So if you're running an existing PC hardware or software company, ask yourself how a new competitor could use the platform transition to challenge your current products. Here's a sobering thought to keep you awake tonight: the odds are that the challengers will win. The company most at risk from this change is the largest vendor of Windows apps, Microsoft itself. Microsoft Office must be completely rethought for the new paradigm. You have about 18 months, guys. Good luck.

By the way, web companies are also at risk. Your web apps are designed for a browser-centric, mouse-driven user experience. What happens to your app when the browser melts into the OS, and the UI is driven by touch? If you think this change doesn't affect you, I have an old copy of WordStar that you can play with. Google and Facebook, I am talking to you.

If you're running a hardware company, how will you need to change your devices to take advantage of the new OS? Shipping a device that isn't Windows 8 ready will soon be as risky as shipping a PC in 1993 that couldn't connect a mouse. (Unfortunately, because Windows 8 is so far out, I don't know if Microsoft has even fully defined the hardware spec for a Windows 8 PC. The OS cries out for a flat panel screen that docks, so you can use it on your lap or as a monitor. Microsoft has a lot of work to do, and the PC vendors will face a lot of uncertainty.)

If you're starting up a software or hardware company, you should ask yourself what new opportunities will be created for you by Windows 8. What category of app or website will be made obsolete by this new operating environment, and can you seize it? (For starters, who's going to take down Office?)

And if you're making a competing platform, this is your opportunity to strike. Microsoft has given you more than a year's advance warning. The race is on to replace Windows. Can you create a better alternative? How will you protect the legacy apps and data of PC users? If you're looking to license, can you line up enough vendors, and a reference hardware design, to get to critical mass before Microsoft does?

I have no idea how this will all turn out, but finally after 20-plus years of GUI dominance on the desktop, fundamental change is at hand and the dice are rolling again.

This will be fun.

Why This E. Coli Outbreak Has Me Scared

The E. coli outbreak that started in Germany is getting bigger and a lot scarier. Ten countries have reported a total of 1,614 severe cases to the European branch of the World Health Organization as of early June 2. Thousands more have no doubt fallen ill with less severe symptoms. On June 1, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported two cases (both travelers) in the U.S. of infection with the strain, called EHEC 0104:H4, and is asking state health departments to be on the lookout for more.*

It is still the early days in the outbreak but as a science journalist, I have three main questions for which I would really like to find a few answers.

1. Where did this rare EHEC 0104:H4 strain come from? I'm not talking about which country it came from but rather how did it develop? Given how quickly and how widespread the outbreak started, I'm particularly interested to learn if any particular industrial agriculture techniques—like liquid manure spreaders—were involved?**

2. Why are adults (and particularly women) being more severely affected than children or the elderly? Perhaps this is just a fluke—for instance, women probably eat more greens than men. Or is there some underlying biological reason—such as an overly robust inflammatory response to the infection called a cytokine storm, as has happened in other toxic E. coli outbreaks?

3. What is the likelihood that this new EHEC 0104:H4 might pick up even more genes that confer resistance to antibiotics? Part of the reason this strain is deadly is because it has picked up the genes to make two different deadly toxins (one that causes bloody diarrhea and the other that attacks the kidneys). And the Robert Koch Institute in Germany has determined that EHEC 00104:H4 strain is also resistant to 14 different antibiotics. Fortunately, it is still susceptible to two of the carbapenem antibiotics (imipenem and meropenem).

I shudder to think what would happen if EHEC 0104:H4 picked up the genes that confer resistance to carbapenems, which are drugs of last resort for gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli. As Maryn McKenna reported in "The Enemy Within" (preview) back in April, carbapenem resistance genes are now proliferating around the world and have already spread to a few strains of E. coli. Given how frequently severe E. coli outbreaks have occurred in recent years, it seems like only a matter of time before we have an E. coli outbreak that is both extremely deadly and completely immune to antibiotics.

Image: Courtesy of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

*Correction (6/2/11): The name of the current strain was corrected throughout the post.

**Clarification (6/2/11): A sentence was deleted after publication because it attributed the origin of a 2006 E. coli outbreak in California to chicken manure. According to the FDA, however, that outbreak's origin remains inconclusive.

Hunger Crisis Worsens, Food System Broken: Oxfam

Hunger Crisis Worsens, Food System Broken: Oxfam: "
By David Brough
LONDON (Reuters) - Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand will soar as the world struggles to raise output via a failing system, international charity Oxfam said Tuesday, warning of worsening global hunger.

"The food system is pretty well bust in the world," Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking told reporters, announcing the launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million people go hungry every day.

"All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up," Stocking said.

Hunger was increasing due to rising food price inflation and oil price hikes fueled by speculators, scrambles for land and water, and creeping climate change, Oxfam said.

Food prices are forecast to increase by something in the range of 70 to 90 percent in real terms by 2030 before taking into account the effects of climate change, which would roughly double price rises again, Oxfam said. Wheat prices have been largely flat so far in 2011 although they remain more than 70 percent above levels traded a year ago after rising sharply last summer as the worst drought in decades devastated crops in the Black Sea region.

Prices for corn have more than doubled in the last 12 months with global production unable to keep pace with record demand driven partly by the growth of the U.S. ethanol industry.

Oxfam warned that by 2050 demand for food will rise by 70 percent yet the world's capacity to increase production is declining.

YIELD GROWTH FALLING

The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one percent in the next decade while increasing regional and local crises could see the need for food aid double in the next 10 years.

"Now we have entered an age of growing crisis, of shock piled upon shock: vertiginous food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns and global contagion," Oxfam said in a report.

"The world's poorest people, who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food, will be hit hardest."

Entitled "Growing a Better Future: Food Justice in a Resource-Constrained World," the report said: "The scale of the challenge is unprecedented, but so is the prize: a sustainable future in which everyone has enough to eat."

Oxfam believes one way to tame food price inflation is to limit speculation in agricultural commodity futures markets. It also opposed support for using food as a feedstock for biofuels.

"Financial speculation must be regulated, and support dismantled for biofuels that displace food," it said.

Stocking said she favored the introduction by regulators of position limits in agricultural commodities futures trading, noting that financial speculation aggravated price volatility.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has campaigned for tough measures to limit speculation and is due to use his platform as president of the world's 20 top economies (G20) to push for more regulation this month.

France's top market regulator told Reuters he expects top global economies to agree a framework this year to dampen speculation in commodities.

The Oxfam report said: "The vast imbalance in public investment in agriculture must be righted, redirecting the billions now being plowed into unsustainable industrial farming in rich countries toward meeting the needs of small-scale food producers in developing countries."

GOVERNMENTS TO BLAME

The report said the failure of the food system flowed from failures of government to regulate and to invest, which meant that companies, interest groups and elites had been able to plunder resources.

"Now the major powers, the old and the new, must cooperate, not compete, to share resources, build resilience, and tackle climate change," it said.

"The economic crisis means that we have moved decisively beyond the era of the G8, when a few rich country governments tried to craft global solutions by and for themselves.

"The governments of poorer nations must also have a seat at the table, for they are on the front lines of climate change, where many of the battles -- over land, water, and food -- are being fought."

(Additional reporting by Nigel Hunt; editing by Keiron Henderson)

Countries That Adopted Facebook Early See Lower Traffic Growth Rates, Occasionally Negative (Eric Eldon/Inside Facebook)

Eric Eldon

Many of the largest, earliest-established countries on Facebook have seen odd traffic fluctuations in the last months, according to our Inside Facebook Gold data. Canada, for example, has gained or lost tens of thousands of users since the middle of last year, and in April lost near half a million users.

But what’s the overall trend? We took a closer look at our historical data to see if larger trends emerge. We graphed the growth rate each month going back to the start of 2008 for five of the first countries to see very broad adoption of Facebook, also including the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Australia.

The results: You can clearly see the overall decline over time, with each of the five falling towards zero. Obviously, percentage gain here can be deceiving because any growth is a lot, proportionally, at the start, but less so as a given country gains. So you’d expect what you see here — sort of. It’s actually surprising to see how many countries maintained growth rates of 5% or more through the middle of last year.

But even if early-adopting countries started losing users, you’d still expect it to not fall below zero given how sticky the site has been with users of varying age, gender, and regional groups. Growth might fall to zero, but why would it go below if half of Facebook users come back every day, as Facebook says?

Except for Turkey, which only has around a third of the country on Facebook, the rest of the countries have roughly half of their populations on Facebook. We’ve previously observed that this is around where a country of any size will stall. The graph here provides further support to that observation.

In these countries, it does appear that recently fewer people come back than had in previous months, without new users making up for the losses. The severity and frequency of the drops appears to have increased starting last July, and the recovery gains have been weaker than in past years had been after drops.

The average decline over months has yet to become negative, though. There are other possible factors at work, too, such as bugs in the Facebook ad tool that we get this data from.

We’ll continue tracking the trends here. For anyone interested in Facebook’s future, whether users, developers, marketers, investors or others, identifying the long-term directions here is crucial for planning how to capitalize on Facebook’s success, or lack thereof.

Coming to a Cornfield Near You: Genetically Induced Drought-Resistance

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to approve a new strain of corn that has been engineered to thrive in drought

By David Biello

Climate change has yet to diminish crop yields in the U.S. corn belt but scientists expect drought to become more common due to global warming in coming years. That could impact everything from the price of food to the price of fuel planet-wide. As a result, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have been pursuing genetic modification to enable the corn plant to thrive even without enough rain. And now the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering approving a new corn hybrid genetically engineered to thrive with less water—the first time such a corn strain would be available.

"Working on something like drought is more complex than introducing a trait like insect resistance," says plant breeder Bob Reiter, vice president of biotechnology at Monsanto, which is seeking approval for the new strain. "We have screened through thousands of genes in the past several years, more than in the entire history for the herbicide-resistant or insect protection."

Monsanto researchers, working with German chemical giant BASF, settled on a gene called "cold shock protein B" that is natively found in the microbe known as Bacillus subtilis, a soil bacteria whose special skill is to shut down, for years if need be, when environmental conditions, such as drought, would otherwise kill it. The new gene won't give that capability to corn but it will help it to maintain normal growth even when provided with less water than normal.

"What it seems to be doing, it's helping the plant basically to maintain more normal metabolic levels in the plant as opposed to trying to shut those processes down understress," Reiter explains. "Next year, in 2012, we will be doing farm trials with farmers to evaluate the gene in different hybrids."

In fact, the new gene will have to work in concert with other introduced genetic packages, such as the genes that make some corn hybrids survive application of glyphosate, the Monsanto-produced pesticide more commonly known as Roundup. "There are 34,000 genes in a corn plant," Reiter says. "Having 10 or 12 or even 15 more express correctly and work in concert, I don't think it's a big challenge."

In field trials in drier regions of the western U.S., the drought-tolerant corn delivered 7 to 10 extra bushels per acre, according to Monsanto and BASF. The USDA estimates that average annual global corn crop losses due to "moderate drought" are 15 percent per year already.

At the same time, human health or environmental impacts remain unknown for this new strain. The U.S. National Research Council found in 2004, however, that no adverse health effects have been found that can be attributed to genetic engineeringdespite American corn consumption rising from 12.9 pounds per capita annually in 1980 to 33 pounds annually by 2008 while the portion of the crop genetically engineered rose from zero to 80 percent over the same period. The USDA will collect public comments on the proposal to allow wider use of such corn until July 11 and then make its final decision.

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Exclusive Excerpt: Sex, Drugs and Sea Slime

Among the organisms of the oceans that are armed and dangerous, there is one elite group of jetsetters that grow fast and are blessed with brains, looks, and a talent for disguise. Though most don’t live long, they can react with lightning-quick speed and deploy amazing defensive countermeasures. They are the stars of film and literature, playing oversized and aggressive monsters with a killer appetite. Most of the oceans’ cephalopods, however, are not out for a fight; when trouble calls, the majority of squids, cuttlefishes, and octopuses prefer to hide or run away. They are also much stranger in fact than in fiction, with truly astonishing capabilities and many bizarre characteristics. Their diverse ranks have come a long way from their distant and rather simple cousin, the clam.

Ellen Prager


The former chief scientist at the world’s only undersea research station, Ellen Prager is a consultant and freelance writer who has authored several books, including her latest, Sex, Drugs and Sea Slime. Look for Prager on her soon-to-be-announced speaking tour sponsored by Microsoft Research Connections.

See images from the book and hear more about the strange creatures of the oceans in a photo gallery and Q&A with the author.

More than eight hundred species of cephalopods reside within the world’s oceans and include squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, the nautilus, and a unique deep-sea crossover — the vampire squid. They are all mollusks, with a heredity distantly connected to shellfish such as clams, oysters, and snails. Oddly, what was once a foot evolved to become mostly a head along with a bevy of arms, and all but the nautilus lost their protective outer shells.

Cephalopods grow fast and most reach maturity within two years. To fuel their rapid growth, most squids, octopuses, and cuttlefishes are voracious and well-equipped hunters, feeding on live prey, such as crustaceans, fishes, shellfish, and other cephalopods. They have eight muscular, suckered arms, which they use to grab and immobilize their victims. Squids and cuttlefishes also have two longer, elastic tentacles that may be tipped with hooked clubs and can be deployed in an instant to lash out at potential victims, aka food. Suckers on a squid’s tentacles may be teethed for better gripping. Because cephalopods have relatively small mouths, these hunters must chop, drill, or soften up their catch before swallowing. To do this, they often use their hard, parrot-like beaks, which can tear apart flesh and crush bone. Within their mouths, they also have rasping tongues lined with small teeth, which some octopuses use to drill through their prey’s outer shell or exoskeleton. And cephalopods have acidic, venomous spit. Their salivary glands produce digestive enzymes and toxins, the latter of which vary in potency with species. The saliva of the small blue-ringed octopus contains one of the deadliest venoms on the planet. These potential “death spitters,” however, seem to be rather timid creatures and use their potent saliva mainly for feeding. A cephalopod’s spit is typically used to paralyze prey. When feasting on crabs, an octopus wields its spew with purpose. It drills a small hole into a crab’s carapace and then injects saliva to destroy its prey’s attachment muscles and begin the digestion process. And being picky, fastidious eaters, octopuses make the most of each meal. Piles of disarticulated shells or crustacean carapaces just outside an octopus’s lair are often picked clean of meat.



Most cephalopods use their excellent vision to hunt down their prey, but they are also able to feel out their victims or seek them through “smell” or chemical cues in the water. Some are also able to sense vibrations produced by an organism’s movements. Once prey is located, cephalopods are well outfitted for the chase. In the open ocean, a squid can outswim and outmaneuver many other animals. Its streamlined, torpedo-shaped body includes a jet-propulsion system that uses muscular contractions to force water into its mantle or bag-like body and out through a maneuverable pipe-like siphon, enabling the squid to become an agile, speedy jetfighter or stealthy hovercraft. Fins along its sides or rear are used for steering and stability, and sometimes for swimming. And when they go from hunter to huntee, some species of squid can even rocket out of the water and glide for up to 50 meters (164 feet) — though Hollywood has yet to produce Attack of the Killer Flying Squid. Though probably not as fast or as agile as squids, many cuttlefishes and octopuses also rely on in-body jet packs for swimming. In contrast, deep-water octopuses use fins for slow-motion sculling, and have webbing between their arms that acts like a parachute or sail. Octopuses that live on the bottom are extremely mobile creatures as well, which can crawl over just about any obstacle, can walk on their arms if need be, and are expert contortionists, able to squeeze through incredibly small openings while on the hunt or to avoid predators.

Hunting strategies vary among the cephalopods. An octopus may grab or pounce on its prey and then drag it back to its lair for stockpiling. As tactile feeders, they may poke and prod looking for food, or simply spread their arms or webbing out and eat whatever they find and capture. Other cephalopods, such as the squids, stealthily stalk their prey or choose a more direct approach and attack head-on, like a ballistic missile strike. With excellent skills at camouflage and mimicry, some of this group may also lure in unsuspecting prey. One deep-sea octopus has special suckers along the length of its arms that emit blue-green light. They may glow dimly or blink on and off, and are thought to attract potential quarry. Beneath its webbed arms, this octopus also produces mucus (seems like under the sea almost everyone does), which may ensnare small crustaceans that drift or swim into it, like a slimy net.

While on the hunt, cephalopods must always be wary of predators. Having lost the protection of an outer shell, their naked, soft bodies of- fer energy-rich, enticing meals. Just about every type of marine carnivore eats cephalopods, including whales, dolphins, seals, seabirds, and fishes such as the billfishes, tuna, groupers, and sharks. Even the cephalopods eat cephalopods.

To avoid the oceans’ hungry masses, cephalopods have developed an extraordinary array of defenses. Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has been studying cephalopods for decades. He discovered that when confronted, their first line of defense is camouflage, and that they are the fastest, best-equipped animals on the planet when it comes to hiding in plain sight. Occasionally, even he has been fooled by their amazing ability to disappear into their surroundings. Cephalopods are able to quickly and precisely take on the appearance of the bottom and become very uncephalopod-like. They can match the brightness, color, pattern, and texture of the seafloor in seconds, create optical illusions, and change the shape of their bodies to mimic in 3-D. Much of their success as disguise artists lies in their sophisticated “smart” skin.

Scattered throughout a cephalopod’s skin are thousands of small color organs called chromatophores, essentially little muscular, elastic sacs containing pigment. When muscular contractions stretch these pigment sacs into flat disks, a cephalopod’s skin is visibly colored or patterned. Individual or groups of chromatophores can be contracted at a time, creating an astonishing assortment of hues and designs. The cephalopods’ prowess as dress designers is not only impressive — it is also fast. In the blink of the eye, they may become striped, polka-dotted, or covered in psychedelic waves of color. An octopus may appear as if painted ruby red one minute and within seconds go ghostly pale or become a dull, mottled brown that replicates the underlying rock or sand bottom. The blue-ringed octopus can cause its namesake circular markings to flash brightly, and many cephalopods can create waves of color that wash over their bodies like a passing cloud. They can also produce patterns that disrupt the outlines of their bodies so that they become nearly unrecognizable. Surprisingly, their chromatophores contain only red, orange, yellow, black, or brown pigments, yet cephalopods exhibit a full rainbow of colors. The mystery of how they do this was solved when scientists discovered that they also have reflecting cells in their skin that act like mirrors or prisms. These iridophores and protein-based leucophores are used in combination with their chromatophores to create a wide variety of striking colors that include vibrant blues, purples, greens, and silver. How cephalopods respond so quickly and create so many patterns is, however, about more than just the color of their skin.

An intricate nervous system runs throughout a cephalopod’s epidermis, connecting its colored pigment organs and reflector cells to its relatively large brain and complex eyes. They are, in fact, the brainiest of all invertebrates, having the largest of the group along with especially well developed eyes. Hanlon’s research team has discovered that cephalopods use their exceptional vision as their primary means of detecting the brightness and patterns within their surroundings, which they then quickly replicate for camouflage. But, ironically, Hanlon’s team also found that most, if not all, cephalopods are color-blind. How then do they perfectly match the color of their surroundings? He suspects that the cephalopods’ skin has some sort of color-sensing capability, but what it is and how it works remain unknown.

As true masters of disguise, octopuses and cuttlefishes can also change the texture of their skin, creating bumps, ridges, or algae-like frills; this too appears to be a vision-based skill. Posing perfectly still or moving in an uncephalopod-like manner, they can imitate their surroundings in 3-D, becoming part of a rock, hiding among seaweed, or “impersonating” another organism. Octopuses have been seen to change their bodies to look and move like a flounder, a sea snake, or a drifting tumbleweed of algae. By hovering motionless and pointing their arms upward, a squid can be- come nearly unrecognizable within a stand of algae. Within the animal kingdom, the cephalopods’ rapid camouflage capabilities are simply the uncontested best. Even the iconic chameleons cannot match their speed or capabilities as quick-change artists.

Some cephalopods also have an illuminating means of camouflage. Using photophores or light organs on their undersides, squids can produce light that matches the radiance downwelling from above. This counter-illumination renders them invisible to predators looking up from below.
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