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| Credit: The Guardian/Western Australian Museum |
Fluorescence in mammals is much more common than previously thought, new research suggests.
A luminous property, fluorescence has been described in recent years in Australian marsupials including platypuses, wombats, Tasmanian devils and echidnas.
But scientists now believe the quality is widespread across mammals after researchers studied 125 species and found all of them showed some form of fluorescence. The researchers found 107 of the 125 species (86%) had fur that glowed under UV light.
The 125 species represent all 27 living mammalian orders and about half of all living mammal families.
I wonder which peptides have this property? Now I have to go investigate this...
This latest work builds on the discoveries from a team at Northland College in Wisconsin, which found fluorescence in flying squirrels and platypuses. Since then people all over have been digging through museum specimens with UV lights and finding fluorescence everywhere!
ReplyDeleteUltraviolet fluorescence discovered in New World flying squirrels (Glaucomys) : https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyy177
Biofluorescence in the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus): https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2020-0027
Thank you!
DeleteI wish I'd gotten a PhD in cuddling wombats at a rave.
ReplyDelete