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So far, though, there’s no evidence in squids and cuttlefishes that light striking skin is enough to make chromatophores blush. Cronin isn’t completely ruling out the idea yet and speculates about more subtle roles. “Maybe they don’t respond directly, but they may alter a signal sent from the central nervous system,” he says. Research on light detection beyond eyes and brains “has been neglected for some time,” says developmental biologist Florian Raible of the University of Vienna. Yet non-eye light sensing structures or compounds show up in the tube feet of sea urchins and the body walls of fruit fly larvae. And in Raible’s lab, a polychaete worm flees light — even after beheading. - www.sciencenews.org