Soldiers going into combat in any future war could have a new weapon in their arsenal - thanks to the lowly cuttlefish.

Scientists at the University of Sussex are studying the creature's amazing ability to camouflage itself by changing colour.

The research, based at a specially-built laboratory at the Sea Life Centre in Brighton, is now being followed up by the Ministry of Defence.

Military top brass have long been interested in the cuttlefish's ability to rapidly change its skin pattern to match its surroundings and escape detection.

They hope the creature's amazing vanishing act could help to conceal tanks in the desert.

Neuro-scientist Dr Daniel Osorio and his team are studying how the tentacled sea creature's brain passes swift and precise information to its body.

Team member Dr Adam Shohet said the idea could lead to a Harry Potter-style "cloak of invisibility" for military personnel and their equipment.

He said: "It is not a huge leap to having a computer-linked camera mounted on a tank, for example, feeding continuous data to colour-changing receptors on the vehicle's skin.

"There's already a very crude version of this kind of technology being used on some advertising hoardings, which can project an infinite number of different images on the same blank sheet of paper by means of thousands of tiny electrodes."

The Government-sponsored cuttlefish study, which started 18 months ago, has already generated three scientific papers.

The purpose-built laboratory has become an intriguing new attraction for Sea Life Centre visitors, who watch the scientists' work through the window and on two video monitors.

Using a specially-designed tank with an angled overhead mirror, Dr Shohet is taking about 100 photographs per day of cuttlefish at rest on a variety of surfaces.

He said: "It adopts the camouflage most effective for hiding it against a particular background, from the kinds of distances its main predators would attack."

Last year the Ministry of Defence sponsored scientists at Bath University to develop a gel which mimics the cuttlefish's ability to blend into its surroundings.