Why Is Blue So Rare In Nature? (VIDEO)
Duh, except for the sky… and the ocean…
Among living things, the color blue is oddly rare. Blue rocks, blue sky, blue water, sure. But blue animals? They are few and far between. And the ones that do make blue? They make it in some very strange and special ways compared to other colors. In this video, we’ll look at some very cool butterflies to help us learn how living things make blue, and why this beautiful hue is so rare in nature.
SPECIAL THANKS:
Smithsonian Institution – National Museum of Natural History
Bob Robbins, Ph.D. – Curator of Lepidoptera
Juan Pablo Hurtado Padilla – Microscope Educator
Richard Prum, Ph.D. – Yale University
Vinothan Manoharan, Ph.D. – Harvard University
SOURCES:
Bagnara, J. T., Fernandez, P. J., & Fujii, R. (2007). On the blue coloration of vertebrates. Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, 20(1), 14-26.
Cuthill, I. C., Allen, W. L., Arbuckle, K., Caspers, B., Chaplin, G., Hauber, M. E., … & Mappes, J. (2017). The biology of color. Science, 357(6350), eaan0221.
Kinoshita, S., Yoshioka, S., & Miyazaki, J. (2008). Physics of structural colors. Reports on Progress in Physics, 71(7), 076401.
Kinoshita, S. (2008). Structural colors in the realm of nature. World Scientific.
Prum, R. O., Quinn, T., & Torres, R. H. (2006). Anatomically diverse butterfly scales all produce structural colours by coherent scattering. Journal of Experimental Biology, 209(4), 748-765.
Vukusic, P., & Sambles, J. R. (2003). Photonic structures in biology. Nature, 424(6950), 852-855.
Vukusic, P., Sambles, J. R., Lawrence, C. R., & Wootton, R. J. (1999). Quantified interference and diffraction in single Morpho butterfly scales. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 266(1427), 1403-1411.
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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Director: Joe Nicolosi
Writer: Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Producer/editor/animator: Jordan Husmann
Producer: Stephanie Noone and Amanda Fox
Produced by PBS Digital Studios
Music via APM
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You never notice how rare blue is, until you do, and then you (don't) see it *everywhere*.
Leave a comment and let me know what you thought of this week's video! And commence the blue-pun party
play 5:08 at 0.25 speed!
2:15 DAT AINT HOLO BOI
O C E A N
Just more proof, as if you needed it, that there is a God.
WELP I learned more in YouTube then in school. An accomplishment I never knew could happen. 🤦♀️
First 35 seconds in the video and imma be like that's why anime porn also has rare blue stuff
I love blue! 💙
The whole sky is blue haha. Clean water is blue.
Does this video consider plants in nature as well? I can think of a few off the top of my head, namely indigo and hydrangeas. I can perhaps imagine hydrangeas being blue due to structure, but indigo is used as a dye so pigment seems more likely there.
BIG QUESTION, really BIG.
Why albino peacock is absolutely white?
If this is a feather structure and not a pigment structure should remain or not ?
Or albino means no info about colors and structures and not missing pigments?
water is blue though
The sky and sea be like
explain guppies.
I have seen similar on nat geo channel
🦋
This channel never ceases to disappoint me: you either explain very bad or give no explaination at all like in this case: "blue was too difficult to create via pigment so they created it with evolution" is not an explaination! What about green?Red?brown? Why animals were born with these colors and not with blue? You didn't answer at all!
Is it ok to sing "Im Blue"?
🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋
The entire sky and ocean is blue or atleast looks blue