color – Alison Pearce Stevens

Dancing peacock spiders

Alison — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 16:10:13 +0000

A 22-year-old researcher in Australia just discovered 12 new species of spider, seven of which are colorful peacock spiders. Not only are peacock spiders beautiful (their name reflects their colorfully patterned abdomens), but they are also exceptional dancers. Males wave their legs, wave their abdomens, and put on quite a show when there’s a female in the area.

Did you know? The brilliant blue on these spider’s hind ends is created by teeny-tiny nanostructures on the scale-like hairs located there. source

Want to know more? Find out how peacock spiders’ colors create an optical illusion at National Geographic.

Death Valley in full bloom

Alison — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 17:41:54 +0000

Death Valley is one of the hottest places on the planet, and most of the time, it’s sandy and barren. But when rain falls, all that changes. Seeds that lay hidden in the soil (sometimes for years) burst open and the desert blooms. This year, that bloom is exceptional. Twenty different kinds of flowering plants currently paint Death Valley dunes a kaleidoscope of color.

It’s called a “superbloom” and you can check it out here:

Quick-change camouflage

Alison — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:25:15 +0000

Scientists now know how chameleons change colors.

Known for their ability to blend in with the environment, chameleons have been famous for their color-changing abilities since Aristotle first described them over 2,000 years ago. Most of the time, chameleons are shades of green and brown. This helps them blend in with the background. But sometimes they need to communicate with other chameleons. Males fight other males. Females let males know when they’re not available to mate. When they do, drab goes by the wayside.

by Tom Junek

Swiss scientists studying panther chameleons found they have a layer of super-tiny nanocrystals in the outer layer of skin. Nano mean one-billionth, so these crystals are only about 0.000007 inch across. Talk about tiny!

When a chameleon is relaxed, the nanocrystals are arranged in such a way that they reflect blue light. The layer of skin beneath the crystals is yellowish. As the blue and yellow combine, we see shades of green. But when the chameleon gets excited, the positions of the crystals changes. This, in turn, alters the color of the light reflected by the crystal. And the calm green chameleon turns yellow and orange, sending a clear signal to his competitor.

Want to see the color change in action? Check it out here.

Did you know? A chameleon’s tongue shoots out of its mouth at a whopping 13.4 miles per hour (21.6 km/h)!

Want to know more? Check out the original research paper.