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Cephalopods are quick-change artists. Like a living LCD screen, their skin can flicker and flash, or create complex patterns for camouflage and communication. Layers of specialized skin cells interact to match the environment’s color and texture.

The Cuetlaxochitl: Another of Mexico’s Gifts to the World

Known to many as Flor de Nochebuena or Poinsettia, this flower’s original Nahuatl name is Cuetlaxochitl, most commonly translated as “withering flower.”

The Cuetlaxochitl has been used as ornamentation and as a dye for millennia. Native to what is currently the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas, it has also been used in traditional medicine to cure fevers and in helping mother’s produce breast milk.

Today, it is often associated with the Christmas holiday season.