In a paper in Nature Communications, the researchers offer

Typically, scientists use animals to study humans, but researchers at the University of California, Irvine reversed the system in their newest research. At the American Chemical Society 2023 meeting, researchers detailed how they used human cells to better understand squid camouflage. … “We had this crazy idea to see whether we could capture some aspect of the ability of squid skin tissues to change transparency within human cell cultures,” said PI [and Associate Professor] Alon Gorodetsky, whose research group has been working on materials inspired by squid.