Octopuses have excellent camouflage. They trick predators by increasing or decreasing skin pigment to change to the same color as rocks. Inspired by octopuses, scientists have developed a synthetic skin that changes with the situation. The technology is seen as applicable to robots and displays. As in the title of the documentary, people have met "my octopus teacher."
Research led by Mark Brongersma, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, announced in Nature on the 8th that, inspired by how an octopus controls its skin to blend in with rocks, they developed for the first time an artificial skin material that can change not only color but also surface texture.
◇ Imitating octopus pigment and protrusion changes
When an octopus relaxes its muscles, chromatophore pigments in the skin shrink and the color lightens. Conversely, when the muscles contract, the pigments spread and the color deepens. In this way, it changes the color of its body. Octopuses also change skin texture. When they move their muscles to create protrusions or grooves on the skin, the way light scatters changes. With this method, smooth skin can be made bumpy like a rock surface in an instant.
The Stanford team created the surface of the artificial skin using a polymer material used in solar cells and electronic circuits. This material can play the role of octopus muscle. It swells upon contact with water but contracts by releasing water when exposed to other liquids such as alcohol.
To make a material that controls texture, they first coated a substrate with the polymer and then used an electron beam to create a concave–convex pattern so that the amount of water absorption differed at specific locations. In effect, they created a camouflage pattern like an electronic circuit. They also added an optical layer to produce color effects. They covered the surface with a transparent film to control the flow of water and to mix various concentrations of alcohol in the water.
The result was a material whose appearance changed dramatically when wetted. Depending on which side of the skin was exposed to the liquid, color and texture could be changed independently. The artificial skin changed color and texture in under 20 seconds. Its performance did not degrade even after hundreds of cycles.
◇ Expected applications on robots and building surfaces
Laura Na Liu, a professor at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, said in a commentary published in Nature the same day that the system, which independently controls both color and texture, implemented one of the most sophisticated camouflage systems in nature.
The researchers said that although only one pattern can be displayed now, they will enable more patterns and allow electronic control of color and texture changes. The paper-like material the team is targeting, inspired by the octopus, can be imagined as an e-book whose color and texture change.
Siddharth Doshi, the paper's first author, said, "We can also build displays that physically implement vivid textures along with color," and "we could even enable display devices to camouflage themselves." If synthetic octopus skin is attached to a robot's body, it could camouflage itself so it is indistinguishable from surrounding objects.
Philippe Lalanne, a nanophotonics researcher at the Laboratoire Photonique, Numerique et Nanosciences in France, also told Nature that a path has opened to create consumer goods or buildings that can change appearance in an unprecedented way. If a building is coated with octopus skin, its exterior color and texture could vary with sunlight and temperature. In other words, cityscapes could change from moment to moment.
◇ All-season fabric inspired by squid skin
Clothing wearable year-round could be made in the same way. In 2024, a team at the University of California, Irvine announced a fiber whose thermal transmittance changes freely with the weather by mimicking the operating principle of chromatophores, the skin pigments of squid, a cephalopod like the octopus.
The team developed a fiber technology that adjusts infrared transmittance to the external environment by controlling metal clusters between fibers, similar to squid skin pigments. Infrared transmits thermal energy. The reflectance of infrared changes depending on the size and pattern of metal islands embedded throughout the fiber. If squid create camouflage patterns by changing the size of skin pigments to control the proportion of visible light transmitted, fibers embedded with metal islands can be seen as controlling temperature through infrared transmittance.
The team said thermal transmittance differed by up to a factor of 10 depending on the pattern of metal islands, allowing the fabric to maintain function even in environments with large temperature swings. This means a wearer can maintain body temperature by blocking or allowing the passage of heat energy emitted from the body.
Experiments showed that at high temperatures, metal islands cluster closer together, increasing infrared reflectance and lowering transmittance. When the wearer's body temperature rises, the metal islands separate, allowing infrared to pass and releasing heat, and when body temperature drops, the metal islands cluster and reflect infrared to help maintain warmth. Instead of fooling the eyes of predators, it is a technology to avoid heat waves and cold snaps.
References
Nature (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09948-2
APL Bioengineering (2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0169558