大象传媒

The peacock flounder's skin can make a near perfect facsimile of its surroundings. A paper-thin profile helps its vanishing trick. But how does it fare on a less familiar background? Its stalked eyes have feature detectors primed to pick out patterns. It does a quick survey of this checkerboard and then it makes a match. The eyes pass data to the brain, which adjusts the size and contrast of pigment cells for the best possible copy. Incredibly, it has to assume how the pattern would continue if its body wasn't there. On familiar ground, the match is perfect and will help protect it from predators.