Transparent bodies galvanize an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey deep in the ocean.
But in the ocean’s twilight zone, transparency has really taken off. “I think you can find transparent representatives from every single animal phyla in the midwater,” says Laura Bagge, a visual ecologist at Torch Technologies who works as a contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense.When light hits something, there are four potential outcomes: The light may bounce backwards, pass through unobstructed, be absorbed or deflect in different directions within the object.
But some creatures have optical tricks up their sleeves. Animals with simple body plans like jellyfish can make themselves as homogenous as possible; others flatten themselves so light doesn’t have to travel far through their bodies. Of this type, small animals can become transparent more easily. “If you stretch anything thin enough — even metal — it will become transparent,” Bagge says.
Though not all animals have the luxury of becoming a homogenous lump. Crustaceans, for instance, have involving diverse organs and tissues. To become see-through, some crustaceans “smush all their organs into one area,” Bagge says, like their head. That clears space in the rest of the body to become transparent.A crystal-clear body isn’t exactly a checkmate on open ocean predators. To counter the transparent tactic, many predators have turned to bioluminescence. These voracious animals, like
, cast searchlights through nearby waters. As it turns out, transparent animals still reflect light from bioluminescence, which causes them to shimmer like a wineglass.
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