This squid hires bacteria to hide it | Hawaiian Bobtail Squid

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]This squid hires bacteria to hide it.

[00:00:03]Without them, it cannot survive for long. At night, the squid swims through the Hawaiian shallows, lit softly from below. From above, predators see only moonlight. The silhouette has been erased. Euprymna scolopes, the Hawaiian bobtail squid. [music] The bacteria are Vibrio fischeri. Drawn into the squid within hours of hatching. Every dawn, the squid expels 90% of them back into [music] the sea. The remaining 10% multiply rapidly through the day. By nightfall, the colony has refilled. The light [music] returns. A coat of light made by something else. The most studied symbiosis in biology.

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