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Right: carotenoids (red) and melanins (dark) on belly/wings of Ramphocelus bresilius. The colors of feathers are produced by pigments, by microscopic structures that can refract, reflect, or scatter selected wavelengths of light, or by a combination of both.
The brilliant iridescent colors of the peacock's tail feathers are created by structural coloration, as first noted by Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke.. Structural coloration in animals, and a few plants, is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light instead of pigments, although some structural coloration occurs in combination ...
Feathers containing melanin are stronger, Shultz said, which is why birds often have dark wing feathers to aid them in flight. Do colors change? Even within the same species, color can vary by age ...
Plumage (from Latin pluma 'feather') is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes.
In his 1665 book Micrographia, Robert Hooke describes the "fantastical" (structural, not pigment) colours of the Peacock's feathers: [3]. The parts of the Feathers of this glorious Bird appear, through the Microscope, no less gaudy then do the whole Feathers; for, as to the naked eye 'tis evident that the stem or quill of each Feather in the tail sends out multitudes of Lateral branches ...
Feathers in humid environments have a greater bacterial load, and humid environments are more suitable for microbial growth; dark feathers or hair are more difficult to break down. [4] More resilient eumelanins (dark brown to black) are deposited in hot and humid regions, whereas in arid regions, pheomelanins (reddish to sandy color ...
The speculum feathers are bright blue with white edges. The speculum is a patch, often distinctly coloured, on the secondary wing feathers, or remiges, of some birds. Examples of the colour(s) of the speculum in a number of ducks are: Common teal and green-winged teal: Iridescent green edged with buff. [1] Blue-winged teal: Iridescent green. [2]
When these feathers are exposed to a white light source, such as sunlight, only the blue part of the spectrum is reflected by the eumelanin granules. This reflected blue light passes through the yellow pigment layer, resulting in the green colouration known as lightgreen in only the budgerigar and/or green in any other naturally green coloured ...