Cuttlefish Color Signal Lab (2D)

Reef Parameters

Cuttlefish 24

Turbidity 58%

Murkier water shrinks the distance a color pulse is visible over, cutting the number of neighbors each cuttlefish can lock its rhythm to.

Group coupling 86%

How strongly a cuttlefish pulls its own pulse phase toward the visible neighbors around it.

Base pulse rate 1.00×

Live Signal Stats

Signals sent

Synchrony

Visible range

Avg neighbors

How it works — coupled color-pulse oscillators

Each cuttlefish carries a pulsing chromatophore rhythm modeled as a phase oscillator, θ, which advances at its own natural rate and flashes bright each time θ completes a full cycle. When cuttlefish can see each other's pulses, each one nudges its own phase toward the average phase of every neighbor currently within its visible range — the same coupled-oscillator mechanism (a Kuramoto model) used to describe synchronized flashing in fireflies and pacemaker cells.

Turbidity — murky water shrinks the visible range a pulse carries over, so fewer neighbors can couple to each other and the group drifts out of sync.
Group coupling — how hard each cuttlefish corrects its phase toward its visible neighbors; push it to zero and every individual pulses at its own free-running rate.
Synchrony — the Kuramoto order parameter: the length of the average phase vector across the whole group, from 0% (random phases) to 100% (perfectly locked).
Signals sent — the running count of individual pulse cycles completed across the group.

Turbidity 58%

Pulsing bright Resting Visible-range ring