In animals, colors are produced either by pigments or by tiny, light-scattering nanostructures. While an impressive range of pigments exists in living organisms, these are ultimately limited by ...

When it comes to color, mammals are hardly the most vibrant creatures of the animal kingdom. Their fur often comes in drab shades of brown, gray or black, unlike some birds, insects or fish that can ...

The iridescent shimmer that makes birds such as peacocks and hummingbirds so striking is rooted in a natural nanostructure so complex that people are only just beginning to replicate it ...

What do a butterfly’s shimmering wings, a fish’s opalescent scales, and a peacock’s brilliant feathers have in common? Yes, their colors are beautifully iridescent. But they are also produced by the ...

Editor's Note: This article was provided by Inside Science. The original is here. (Inside Science) -- The rainbow-hued shimmer of fish scales, bird feathers, and insect bodies that change color and ...

Nerves in squid skin control the animal's spectrum of shimmering hues -- from red to blue -- as well as their speed of change, biologists have found. The work marks the first time neural control of ...

Structural colors, like those found in some butterflies' wings, birds' feathers and beetles' backs, resist fading because they don't absorb light like dyes and pigments. However, the iridescence that ...

Jewel beetles (Sternocera aequisignata) have iridescent wing cases that change color depending on which angle the light hits them, like a peacock’s feather or an opal. A new study published in Current ...