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Why blue animals are so rare

popsci.com

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Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#61

Post by gnu8 »

elcritch wrote: post #40
crmd wrote: post #37

>Organisms that appear blue must absorb very small amounts of energy, while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since penetrating the molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world. I’m not a biologist, but these sentences immediately reminded me of reading articles about my company/technology after press briefings and feel…

You’re not wrong. It appears to be a very garbled technical explanation. Mainly that organisms need to absorb low frequency/energy light while reflecting higher frequency/energy light. I’m guessing that chemically that’s harder to do.

I think this is closer to what was intended:

Molecules that appear blue must absorb very small amounts of energy, while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since assembling the molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world.

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#62

Post by aydyn »

bawolff wrote: post #55
ianferrel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution is optimizing for survival, not crop yield.

Having more energy available (all things being equal which they aren't) is advantous to both survival and crop yields.

only if more energy doesnt come at the cost of something else, like water retention

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#63

Post by 2-3-7-43-1807 »

prompt to ChatGPT 4o:

there are very few blue colored animals. also it was very difficult to develop LEDs emitting blue colored light. are those two observations technically related? can you summarize the technical relationship in a paragraph of few sentences?

answer:

The rarity of blue color in animals and the difficulty in developing blue LEDs are technically related due to the higher energy associated with blue light. Producing materials or structures that can efficiently emit or reflect blue light is challenging because blue light has shorter wavelengths and higher energy, requiring precise and stable materials. In animals, this results in the reliance on complex structural coloration rather than pigments. Similarly, the development of blue LEDs required breakthroughs in materials science to create stable semiconductors capable of emitting high-energy blue light, such as gallium nitride.

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#64

Post by setopt »

al_borland wrote: post #47
setopt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best ways to improve crop yields via genetic engineering might be to create black plants.

If that was optimal, I would expect it would be the standard by now. Not through genetic engineer, but through basic evolution over millions of years.

I honestly doubt it’s in a global optimum, as evolution is easily stuck in decent local minima.

Simple example: “C4 carbon fixation”, which allows photosynthesis to proceed with much less water available, only evolved ~30 million years ago. This was the revolution that allowed modern grasses to emerge, and thus changed enormous barren deserts into the savannahs that early humans made their home. Despite being such an improvement, this is not yet a “standard”; trees, for example, still use the “old” inefficient “C3 carbon fixation”.

Despite photosynthesis having been around for hundreds of millions of years, fundamental improvements still happened just 30 million years ago. I would suspect that there is more that can still be improved.

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#65

Post by dse1982 »

My cousin wrote a book about this topic (it is not only about blue animals but the general scarcity of blue in the natural environment): https://www.amazon.de/Blue-Science-Secrets-Natures-English-e...

I never gave this much thought before but the book quite successfully managed to interest me in its subject and lead to me understanding some of the underlying mechanisms (which lay all outside my domain as a software developer).

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#66

Post by xtiansimon »

Reminds me of Truite au Bleu or blue trout. It’s a recipe for cooking fresh trout which supposedly originated in the Alps.

“Why Trout Is Turning Blue in an Old Garage in Queens”

It’s the best way to cook trout. You’re welcome.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/kbxdv9/why-trout-is-turning-...

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#69

Post by yencabulator »

datameta wrote: post #20

Fascinating 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?

The article says "manipulate the light that shines on them that simulates their signature blue look". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simulation meaning number 4, "Assuming an appearance which is feigned, or not true.".

I believe what they are trying to communicate (pretty poorly) is that the hairs are not blue as such, but in certain circumstances can manipulate light into the blue-violet spectrum.

Think of it this way: a prism isn't any of the rainbow colors, but can manipulate light into such.

Re: Why blue animals are so rare

#70

Post by Myrmornis »

User23 wrote: post #44
Myrmornis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration seems like a decent explanation.

The best explanation I’ve read is Feynman’s delightful QED .

Haha OK, some avian plumage enthusiasts might find that a bit of a detour though!
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