Blue jays are a pretty easy example of structural coloration
Why blue animals are so rare
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Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#12lots of blue birds
"Blue birds, blue jays, cerulean warblers, peacocks: all blue birds, but none of them are actually blue"
I stand corrected
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#13Just saw a Blue Jay last week. Chicory has nice blue flowers. Both are common in Chicagoland.
There are many birds which are blue, but none of them have blue pigments [1]. It's a light-scattering effect.
[1] https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2016/05/09/the...
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#14Someone told me that chefs use blue bandaids, because there is no blue food.
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#15Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#16Here’s a good answer from SE: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/56476/why-are-so... (spoiler: we don’t know). But the second answer speculates that blue light was the most available to the ancestors of current plants (due to properties of Earth’s atmosphere) so they evolved to absorb it.
Related question is why plants are green: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/450/why-do-plant...
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#17lots of blue birds
"Blue birds, blue jays, cerulean warblers, peacocks: all blue birds, but none of them are actually blue" I stand corrected
> none of them are actually blue
The article is just trying to be controversial or something; they are actually blue. Structure colors are no less real than pigment colors. It's not an optical illusion or some glitch in human perception, bounce white light off a bluejay and pass it through a prism, a strong blue line will be apparent. That blue light really is there, therefore they really are blue.
This notion that only colors coming from pigments are true colors is completely arbitrary nonsense.
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#18The linked post—https://set.adelaide.edu.au/news/list/2019/08/20/why-is-the-...>—is much better about answering the question, rather than listing some examples.
Basically:
- Blue is rare in plants since it means leaving high energy behind.
- Many animals are a color because of there food, and see above.
- Thus, any blue is trickier, and usually done via scattering and mixing rather than a pigment. "The only exception in nature is the obrina olivewing butterfly, which is the only known animal to produce a true blue pigment."
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#19The article mentions plants too. But I can list a number of blue plants in my vicinity (OK, sometimes a touch of purple too) or even in the garden:
[Centaurea cyanus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_cyanus?wprov=sfla1)
[Digitalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis?wprov=sfla1)
[Centaurea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea?wprov=sfla1)
[Scabiosa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scabiosa?wprov=sfla1)
[Phacelia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phacelia?wprov=sfla1)
and last but not least many varieties of [Campanula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campanula?wprov=sfla1)
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#20Fascinating article. But early on I had one question - why is a blue that is made by sunlight hitting hair nanostructures considered a "simulation" thereby differentiating it from color made through sunlight interaction with biochemistry of surfaces and subsurfaces?
To draw that out further, by the same logic we might consider properties of human-made metamaterials also simulations?