Posted on 06/21/2021 8:29:35 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Peacocks, panther chameleons, scarlet macaws, clown fish, toucans, blue-ringed octopuses, and so many more: The animal kingdom has countless denizens with extraordinarily colorful beauty. But in many cases, scientists know much more about how the animals use their colors than about how they make them. New work continues to reveal those secrets, which often depend on the fantastically precise self-assembly of minuscule features in and on the feathers, scales, hair, and skin—a fact that makes the answers intensely interesting to soft-matter physicists and engineers in the photonics industry.
...The blue end of the spectrum, however, represents a different challenge because few blue pigments are available to eat in nature. Yet blue jays, neon tetras, poison dart frogs, and many other animals found a solution that doesn’t rely on pigments, evolving optical tricks to make blues (and some greens) a different way. They make what are called “structural colors.”
...The diffracted light waves interact with one another; depending on the thickness of each layer and the wavelength of the light, the waves either add up or cancel out. By getting the thickness of the layers just right (100 nanometers), the limpet makes all the wavelengths except blue ones cancel one another out.
At high magnification, the colored barbs (filaments) of feathers have a foamy structure, with small, uniform spheres of air suspended in beta-keratin protein. The light scattering off each air bubble interacts with the light bouncing off neighboring bubbles. “And because they are just the right size to do this, they make a blue color, or a turquoise color, or an ultraviolet color,”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Can someone explain how many iterations of what duration?
That looks like a near infinity? How does that work, I forgot?
I learned a valuable lesson in Kindergarten when — I have no idea why — my teacher told the class that there are no blue animals. I said, “What about the blue whale? Or the Bluebird?”
She just told the class that I was wrong, and we moved on.
The lesson she taught me that day was reinforced by many teachers throughout my educational experience.
By design. You knew that already, no?
Amen! By Design :) The design of God that is!
Blue Whales?...................
Good story, great lesson.
Most male animals in the animal kingdom are the ones with the most colorful features. That is, except humans, where the females do everything they can to make themselves look pretty.
If you’ve ever had a polar bear as a pet, then you know they are blue. The zoologists say ‘black’ but that would be racist....................
I guess if a random FReeper who earned a B-minus in high school biology and almost flunked trigonometry can't fathom how that works, then it must be inexplicable!
Regards,
“evolving optical tricks”
__________
The most intelligent thing ever:Random Chance...or, if you like, Brute Force.
Capable of solving the most vexing problems (provided you’ve got a million or so years to hang around for an answer).
Who would every have thought of that?
So ironic.
Is your name Johnny?
Is that why the teacher disliked your answers?
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blue-footed_Booby/overview
A friend told me evolution is like an earthquake shaking the Boeing parts warehouse, and an assembled 737 rolls out the doors.
Birds of a feather flocking together is racist.
For the same reasons sunsets aren’t orange and red
Funny... I was only yesterday watching how beautiful dragonflies were and commenting to my son, “there should be more blue animals.”
I think I had the same teacher.
But I wasn’t as compliant. I went to the encyclopedia and found the picture of a blue jay
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