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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		How to test if an octopus can see colors
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:06
	Publish Date:		2016-09-06 19:00:00
	Description:		How do you test a new theory on how cephalopods see color? Creatures like octopuses only have one type of light receptor in their eyes, meaning they have black and white vision. But graduate student Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley teamed up with his father, Harvard astrophysicist Christopher Stubbs, to design a computer model simulating how cephalopods might be able to use their strangely shaped pupils to detect color. "There’ve been a number of studies studying the physical optical properties of cephalopod eyes, and then a really rich history of behavioral experiments on cephalopods. So we used the measured optical properties of cephalopod eyes, and then we were able to complete our computer simulation to be able to look at the refractive properties of cephalopod eyes with real spectra that they might encounter in their natural habitat. And I’d say we sort of show, as a proof of concept, that this could work for those organisms and that it’s consistent with prior behavioral data." It turns out that contrast was particularly important for picking out colors.
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