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Information and IdeasHardSupporting a claim about octopus sleep

Information and Ideas practice question

Researchers claim that the vivid skin-color cycling octopuses display while resting is a genuine sleep stage — perhaps analogous to dreaming — rather than a camouflage response to the surroundings. ____

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' claim?

  1. A. Octopuses woken during the color-shifting phase responded sluggishly, as sleeping animals do, rather than with the alertness of camouflage.Correct
  2. B. Octopuses shift colors most dramatically when hunting crabs.
  3. C. Cuttlefish, a related species, also display skin color changes.
  4. D. Octopuses in the study slept in dens they had built from shells.

Answer: A. Octopuses woken during the color-shifting phase responded sluggishly, as sleeping animals do, rather than with the alertness of camouflage.

The claim is that the color-shifting phase is true sleep, not camouflage; sluggish arousal during that phase is the behavioral signature of sleep.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. Octopuses shift colors most dramatically when hunting crabs.
Hunting color changes are awake behavior and do not bear on the sleeping phase.
C. Cuttlefish, a related species, also display skin color changes.
Another species changing color says nothing about whether this phase is sleep.
D. Octopuses in the study slept in dens they had built from shells.
Den-building shows shelter habits, not the nature of the color-shifting phase.

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