Your average female Doratosepion andreanum cuttlefish finds nothing more alluring than the long, extended arms of a male cuttlefish aglow with elaborate patterns made of horizontally and vertically polarized light. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/iJYh50Y8lug

“Male Andrea cuttlefish (Doratosepion andreanum) – quite drab to human eyes – use their birefringent arms to literally twist light, creating a highly conspicuous signal precisely tuned to cuttlefish vision.” #scicomm www.sciencealert.com/cuttlefish-l... 🧪 🐙 🦑

Our paper is out from @pnas.org ! We found that cuttlefish use transparent muscle to produce polarized courtship signal. Birefringence property of muscle makes the transmitted light highly conspicuous for cuttlefish polarization vision. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...