Octopus eye pie!
When it comes to marine animals (and hence things in the universe generally) you don't get more funky than the Cephalopods (lit. "head foot"). These little beasties are molluscs; related to the snails and mussels of the sea shore, but rather more advanced. These animals have been in in the oceans for many millions of years, they were one of the first mobile predators to leave the seabed. The most primitive of this group the Nautilus uses the chambers in its shell to help with buoyancy, however this is a problem as if they pass beyond 800m depth they implode (who found this out I don't know)
The more advanced Cephalopods, the squid, cuttles and octopods are even more fun. One of teh most distinctive features of these animals is their ability to camoflage themselves from predators using special cells in their skin called chromatophores. They expand and contract allowing the animal to adopt an amazing array of patterns over their bodies. The common belief that these animals can change colour is largely a misnomer; the colour of a cephalopod is determined mainly by their surrounding environment, they only show massive colour change as they have reflective skin which naturally reflects the colour of the light which is incident from the environment. the Cephalopod merely fiddles with contrast to show these wonderful patterns.
As well as colour many cephalopods can change the texture of the shin over their bodies, thus making their disguise when hiding extremely elaborate. They are able to change both the texture of teh skin and its pattern in a fraction of a second which means that they can escape predators by moving with the current in the sea as a bright smooth animal, then suddenly duck into some weeds, change into a leafy looking drab beast and the predator simply swims past them , confused as to where its dinner has gone.
When all else fails the Cephalopod can squirt ink, which can server two purposes, firstly it forms a smoke screen behind which the animal can make good its escape and secondly some species actually produce an ink cloud in the shape of themselves such that the predator attacks the ink, again allowing the Cephalopod to escape.
