SCIENCE LAB SCEPTRE : CUTTLEFISH PARTNERS

CUTTLEFISH may attract partners with a technique humans can't see : Many of the snazziest adornments in the animal kingdom are charm offensives, used by creatures looking for sexual partners.

While some, like a peacock's tail feathers, are obvious to humans, other can elude our detection.

A new study in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences offers the first evidence of such a display : cuttlefish enticing mates with patterns created by polarized light.

Since humans can't perceive this, '' It's really difficult to know exactly what polarized light looks like to an animal that can see it,'' said Arata Nakayama, an author of the study and a research fellow at the National Taiwan Normal University.

As far as researchers can tell, polarization adds contrasts or texture to what an animal sees, which can help make objects stand out more clearly.

The Publishing continues to Part [ 2 ]. The World Students Society thanks Kate Golembiewski.