An insect that detects color with your skin, not your eyes?

It turns out that the Peppered moth, a type of mimetic moth, senses the surrounding environment using the skin, not its own eyes, when mimicking.

Chameleons, octopuses, and some worms pretend to assimilate their bodies to their surroundings so that they do not get eaten by predators. The research team at the Max Planck Institute of Science and Education in Germany blocked the eyes of the gray branched moth caterpillar, a type of moth that changes its body color to a color close to a hanging tree branch, and observed the effect to determine how mimic insects perceive their surroundings. .

The research team observed changes in body color with gray branched moth larvae that closed their eyes and gray branched moth larvae that were blinded as a control group.

As a result of observation, it was found that the gray branched moth caterpillars with clogged eyes also changed their body color to match the color of the stick. It is said that there was a difference in the protective color color and saturation brightness between the gray branched moth caterpillar and the normal caterpillar, but the difference was a level that the natural enemy could not recognize. In other words, even if the eyes are blocked, the subtlety of the mimicry that the gray branch moth larvae manifests does not change.

In addition, if the gray branch moth larva whose body color has already changed was moved to a branch of a color different from the body color, it moved to a point that matches the color of his body. The gray branch moth caterpillar reaffirms the fact that it can recognize the surrounding color even when the eyes are blocked.

The research team found that the genes related to vision are expressed not only in the head but also in the body as a result of conducting a genetic study of the gray branch moth. It is also said that there was a visual gene that was expressed more on the front of the body than on the head. Research is being conducted by seeing that genes that are frequently expressed on the front of the body are related to the perception of surrounding colors. Related information can be found here .