The Designspace

The Cuttlefish: An Intelligent Cephalopod

Before I visited the Georgia Aquarium, most of what I used to know about cuttlefish included the fact that they can be purchased neatly packaged in dried chewy form in Japanese groceries. So, I was very surprised when I first met one face to face in the Georgia Aquarium and realized they are remarkably intelligent creatures.

Cuttlefish are invariably curious about people, and will come up and try to get a better look if you catch their eye. They are precision swimmers, able to hover motionless near an object of interest by rippling their skirt of fins, only to suddenly jet off in another direction using their funnel siphon when they have seen enough.

They are equally curious about other cuttlefish - even images of cuttlefish - as the video below by Brian Leahy demonstrates. In the middle of the video, the videographer turns the camera's display around to face the nearby cuttlefish which inspires an immediate darkening response, and causes all the other cuttlefish in the tank to start moving purposefully toward the camera.

An article by Brenna Lorenz describes an encounter with cuttlefish and humans who had the idea to match the gestures made by the cuttlefish with their tentacles. The Cuttlefish of Sentosa (Sentient Cephalopods), by Brenna Lorenz

In a similar vein, a comment on a Reddit story on a troublesome octopus describes how the author, Saydrah, used hand-signals to communicate to a tank full of cuttlefish:

"...Okay, I was 13 and on a school trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Each kid in the class had been assigned a sea critter to study, and mine was the Cuttlefish. I realized while writing my report that in almost every photo of a cuttlefish where it was clear that it could see the person taking the photo, it held its tentacles like this. (click here) I was also learning some sign language at the time, and it clicked: It's a greeting. At least, that was my theory, and as soon as I got to the aquarium I sought out the cuttlefish to test it. There were 16 cuttlefish in the tank. I asked a staff member about them, and she said, "I know we put 16 in there, but they blend in so well we haven't seen more than 6 at a time since then. There haven't been any bodies, so I presume there are still 16." At first I could spot two, camouflaged on rocks. I went up to the tank, knelt down, and held my fingers in the greeting pose from the photos. Incidentally, cuttlefish have 10 tentacles, two of which are set back and only shoot out to grab prey. Much like 10 fingers with two set back thumbs. It's easy to make your hands into a recognizably cuttlefish like shape. With 10 minutes, I had 13 cuttlefish lined up at the front of the tank doing the greeting pose back at me. My teacher got all this on video, and a couple staff members came over and were floored at the sight. They started doing the sign language at the cuttlefish too, and the cuttlefish responded to them also. Some of them also changed color, which obviously I couldn't mimic, and made different tentacle poses, which I tried to repeat back to them. After a couple minutes, one smallish cuttlefish turned red, grabbed a shrimp that was in the tank as a snack for the cuttles, and pushed the shrimp up against the glass in front of my hands. It seemed to be offering it to me. Then a larger cuttlefish turned white, grabbed the shrimp from the smaller one, and the big cuttlefish then repeated the effort to push it through the glass to me! The small cuttlefish turned gravel patterned, shot a jet of water out, and went to hide behind a tank decoration.

from comment by Saydrah on Reddit

The ability of cuttlefish to instantly mimic the color and texture of their environment, particularly the area underneath them, is well known but little understood. They use a layer of chromatophores and a layer of iridiphores (reflective cells) [Meet the Cuttlefish] which are revealed when chromatophores contract as well as detailed muscular control to create visual and textural illusions.

The textures and colors they imitate are so complex that it led me to wonder if cuttlefish use only their eyes as the sole inputs for processing visual information. In other words, if their eyes are covered, can they still mimic their surroundings? Several recent articles present evidence that their eyes are indeed the main sensors. Cuttlefish eyes have been determined to be colorblind, but are sensitive to the orientation of polarization of incoming light. One study determined that contrast is one of the main visual cues used to determine the pattern of camouflage.

Cuttlefish mimicking a net trap
(I don't have an attribution for this photo yet)

Their visual patterning is used for communication as well as camouflage, and even sometimes for hypnotizing their prey [ A Dazzling Show.]

These visual signals have been analyzed and found to have a signal capacity of approximately 3 bits per signal - enough for some primitive communication, if not an actual language in the human sense of the word.

Make the pandacam show up permanently on your desktop

Thanks to Dave Taylor, I now have the PandaCam widget visible on my desktop all the time. No need to hit F12 to see if the Pandas are doing something cute.

Per Dave's instructions, just open the Terminal, and type:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

You should get another system prompt (">").

Then log out and log in again.

Hit F12 to show the widgets, and click and hold the one you want to have display all the time. Keep the mouse down, and press F12 again.

That's all there is to it!

A SCORM-ready template: Part 7: Embedded Perception Quizzes

Features of the new embedded quiz module:

1. Questionmark Perception quizzes can be interspersed among the other pages:
   
   

   
   In this module, there is a quizlet at the end of the first chapter, at the second level, so it is not visible on first opening the module.

   
   
   
   

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2. When a user clicks a Quizlet button in the Navbar, a loading message displays:

   
   

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3. Then the quiz appears in an iframe on the page:
   

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4. The quizzes will only display when the module is under SCORM control, so that the module can be used as reference without going through the LMS, and users will not get a "sneak preview" of the quiz. If the module is not under SCORM control a warning message displays:

   
   




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5. when the user finishes answering the questions, they click the Submit answers button

   
   

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6. They are shown the raw and percent score for THIS quizlet and any feedback.

   

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7. Upon completing a quiz, the user is given three options: go to next page in this module, consult the summary & score page, or try this same quiz again.

   




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8. There is a Summary, Score & Finish page which can be checked at any time. It keeps track of all quiz pages in the module, and whether they have been completed yet. The user is given the option to try any quiz again, or to go to any quiz not yet completed. They are NOT given the option to finish up and move on to the next module until this module is completed. They have the option to jump to the next module from within the "enter the lesson page" in MLearning, but this module will not be marked "Complete" until all quizzes have been taken.

   
   

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9. When the user clicks "try again" or simply navigates back to a quiz that was already taken, they are prompted to confirm that they want to erase their current score.

   
   
   




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10. Once all quizzes are completed, the user is shown the final outcome (Passed or Failed) and given options to improve their score or move on.

    
    

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11. Quizzes can be of varying lengths, can incorporate branching between blocks within the quiz, and you do not need to know up front which or how many questions will be presented when designing your module.



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12. Scoring is based on the total points that are actually presented after taking ALL the quizzes. The module will not complete until all quizzes have been taken. The final percentage score sent to the LMS is based on the formula:
    

    
    
    (points earned/total possible points presented)x100
    
     or
    
    (raw score/maximum score)*100
    
    
    eg.: 4 points earned out of 12 points maximum = .33333 X 100=33%
    
    

    
    



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13. This template could be adapted to use quizzes of other types than Perception by having them send the necessary values to the module upon completion of each quiz. The module only requires a score and a maximum possible score for each quiz .



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14. The SCORM communication is all taken care of by the module.

Instructions for setting up the module:

1. The main difference in setting up this learning module is in the PageArray. Questionmark quizzes are accessed using a special type of URL. An example of a PageArray set up to contain two quizzes is below:

   var PageArray = new Array(  
   {buttonTitle:'Competency Criteria', title:' ', url:'page01.htm', chapter:0,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Section 1 Intro', title:'',url:'page02.htm',chapter:1,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page03.htm',chapter:1,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page04.htm',chapter:1,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page05.htm',chapter:1,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page06.htm',chapter:1,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page07.htm',chapter:1,level:3 },
   {buttonTitlehttp://thedesignspace.net/MT3-static/images/formatting-icons/bold.gif:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page08.htm',chapter:1,level:3 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page09.htm',chapter:1,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Quizlet 1', title:'',url:'includes/quizWrap.htm?call=embed&session=5338739740083895&href=http://yourperceptionserver.com/q/session.dll',chapter:1,level:2, quiz:'5338739740083895' },
   {buttonTitle:'Title of p.11 goes here', title:'',url:'page10.htm',chapter:1,level:3 },
   {buttonTitle:'Section 2 Intro', title:'',url:'page11.htm',chapter:2,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page12.htm',chapter:2,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page13.htm',chapter:2,level:3 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page14.htm',chapter:2,level:3 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page15.htm',chapter:2,level:3 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page16.htm',chapter:2,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Section 3 Intro', title:'',url:'page17.htm',chapter:3,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Title goes here', title:'',url:'page18.htm',chapter:3,level:2 },
   {buttonTitle:'Section 4 Intro', title:'',url:'page19.htm',chapter:4,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Section 5 Intro', title:'',url:'page20.htm',chapter:5,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'Quizlet 2', title:'',url:'includes/quizWrap.htm?call=embed&session=7995334546622398&href=http://yourperceptionserver.com/q/session.dll',chapter:5,level:2, quiz:'7995334546622398' },
   {buttonTitle:'References', title:'',url:'page21.htm',chapter:6,level:1 },
   {buttonTitle:'>Summary, Score & Finish', title:'',url:'scorePage.htm',chapter:7,level:1 }
   //IMPORTANT!!! the last item does NOT get a comma at the end
   ); //do NOT delete this final punctuation       
   
   

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2. Each quiz page is represented by one entry similar to the one below.
   

   
   
   {buttonTitle:'Quizlet 2', title:'',url:'quizWrap.htm?call=embed&session=7995334546622398&href=http://your.perceptionserver.com/q/session.dll',chapter:5,level:2, quiz:'7995334546622398' },
   
   

   
   

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3. Each entry in the PageArray contains the attributes "buttonTitle", "title", "url", "chapter", "level", and the quiz entries also contain one called "quiz".
   

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4. Replace the long number in the middle of the attribute "url" with the assessment identifier for your Perception quiz, and also add it after the attribute "quiz:"



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5. The last entry in the PageArray of a module with embedded quizzes must be the Summary, Score & Finish page::
   

   {buttonTitle:'>Summary, Score & Finish', title:'',url:'scorePage.htm',chapter:7,level:1 }
   
   

Instructions for setting up the Perception quizzes in Authoring Manager:

1. A Qpack of a sample embedded quiz can be downloaded here
   
2. the file "embed.pip" must be called in the URL (see examples in the PageArray above



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3. Quizzes must use the special template MLearningEmbedinModule.template



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4. Each quiz should have only one outcome, in other words a single scoreband of 0-100%.