Ultra-specialized proteins enable octopuses and squids to taste surfaces with their suckers — and these proteins are tailored to each animal’s way of life
. The receptors seem to have evolved from those that many other organisms use to send signals through the nervous system.
The researchers compared the octopus receptors with those found in the tentacle suckers of striped dumpling squid and found that the squid receptors responded to molecules that would produce a bitter taste. This suggests that a squid might choose to accept or reject its prey based on this particular taste.
Analysing the squid and octopus genomes showed that the receptors had evolved independently after squid and octopus ancestors diverged around 300 million years ago, acquiring new properties over time. The need for different types of receptors makes sense: squids float in the water, see their prey and shoot out tentacles to capture it, meaning that their suckers don’t taste a fish until they touch it.
“To have so much insight so quickly is really exciting,” says Cliff Ragsdale, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, Illinois. He says that the findings raise many questions, including how the suckers send sensory information to the octopus’s brain and how the brain interprets it.
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