Surprisingly, it lit up bright pink.īefore then, the only known fluorescing mammals were Didelphidae marsupials, which include two dozen species of American opossums. That discovery happened by accident-while the researchers were studying lichen, one pointed a UV flashlight at a flying squirrel that was chowing down at a birdfeeder. The same team of scientists previously discovered that flying squirrels are fluorescent, Meilan Solly wrote for Smithsonianin 2019. Their nocturnal nature is what caught these researchers’ attention. They’re most active at night when they hunt frogs, fish and insects in the water. Males have venomous spurs on the inner side of each ankle, and females sweat milk from pores on their stomachs. When Europeans first laid eyes on preserved platypus skins, they suspected that they were the Frankenstein-style result of a taxidermy trick, Mindy Weisberger writes for Live Science.īut they’re no hoax-platypuses have bills like ducks, webbed feet like otters, and tails like beavers, making them perfect for swimming along the bottoms of rivers, lakes and streams. Platypuses are semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammals that live in eastern Australia.
"But we were also interested in seeing how deep in the mammalian tree the trait of biofluorescent fur went.” "It was a mix of serendipity and curiosity that led us to shine a UV light on the platypuses at the Field Museum," said lead author Professor Paula Spaeth Anich, associate professor of biology and natural resources at Northland College in a statement. The authors of the study specifically looked at two platypus specimens kept at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and one specimen kept at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Now platypuses have joined the exclusive club. Emitting light of one color after absorbing light of a different color is called fluorescence, and scientists only recognize a couple of known fluorescent mammals. Research published in the journal Mammalialast month shows that if scientists shine light with wavelengths between 200 and 400 nanometers-that’s ultraviolet, just a little too short for humans to see-on a platypus, then the animal’s brown body reflected back bright blue-green light with a wavelength between 500 and 600 nanometers, George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo. It turns out real life platypuses are blue-green, too-at least when they’re under an ultraviolet spotlight. Disney Channel may not have been far off with when they colored Perry the Platypus bright teal.
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