Mysterious light communication is found in marine animals

Animals between each other may have various ways to communicate. What about the marine animals? A new form of secret light communication has been found in marine animals.

The discovery was made by researchers at the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland. In earlier time, Dr Yakir Gagnon, Professor Justin Marshall and their colleagues did research on mantis shrimp and found that they can reflect and detect circular polarising light. That's a mystical ability which is rare in nature. No one has known what it is used for by the mantis shrimp.

However, the new study comes out to show that the circular polarisation is used by the shrimp to covertly advertise their presence to aggressive competitors.

That's to say, scientists have found a new way of communication we never saw it on other animals. For birds, they take color as one of their communication means; for reef fish, color is also a form of communication we've learnt. Now at this time, light communication is uncovered as a way to communicate.

Linear polarised light is seen only in one plane, while circular polarised light travels in a spiral, which is a clockwise direction or an anti-clockwise direction. Then the researchers judged that mantis shrimp display circular polarised patterns on the body - particularly the head, legs and tail - these parts are most visible when they curl up during conflict.

The findings may help doctors find out cancers. Cancerous cells do not reflect polarised light, which is in the same way as healthy cells. Therefore, cameras equipped with circular polarising sensors may detect cancerous cells before people can see them with naked eyes.

This study will be published in the print edition of Current Biology in December 2015, together with another study which shows that fiddler crabs use linear polarised light as a form of communication. All these findings may be useful if applied to cancer detection, computer data storage, biomedical imaging, and satellite remote sensing.

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