Platypuses Glow an Eerie Blue-Green Under UV Light
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Platypuses glow an eerie blue-green under UV light:
Duck-billed, egg-laying platypuses just got a little weirder: It turns out their fur glows green and blue under ultraviolet (UV) light.
Under visible light a platypus's extremely dense fur - which insulates and protects them in cold water - is a drab brown, so the trippy glow revealed under UV light on a stuffed museum specimen was a big surprise.
[...] Prior to this discovery, biofluorescence was known in only two mammals: flying squirrels, which are placental mammals, and opossums, which are marsupials, according to the study, published online Oct. 15 in the journal Mammalia.
Study co-author Allison Kohler, a doctoral candidate in the Texas A&M University Wildlife and Fisheries Department in College Station, Texas, had previously tested museum specimens of flying squirrels and found that all three North American species - the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus), the southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) and the Humboldt's flying squirrel (Glaucomys oregonensis) - glowed bright pink in UV light. Kohler and her colleagues reported their results on Jan. 23, 2019, in the Journal of Mammalogy.
While testing the flying squirrel museum specimens for signs of biofluorescence, they decided to look at other mammal species in the same collections too, according to a statement.
Journal Reference:
Paula Spaeth Anich, Sharon Anthony, Michaela Carlson, Adam Gunnelson, Allison M. Kohler, Jonathan G. Martin and Erik R. Olson, Biofluorescence in the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), Mammalia, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2020-0027
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