Found in the forests of Papua -Guinea, Indonesia and East -Australia, Birds or Paradise are famous for flashy feathers and unusually formed ornaments, which determine the standard for haute couture among birds. Many use these feathers for flamboyant mating displays in which they shape in alien forms.
As if this did not attract enough attention, we have now learned that they also glow in the dark.
Biofluorescent organisms are everywhere, from mushrooms to fishing to reptiles and amphibians, but few birds have been identified as glowing feathers. This is why biologist Rene Martin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to investigate. She and her team studied a wealth of specimens in the American Museum of Natural History, which have been gathered since the 19th century, and discovered that 37 of the 45 famous species of birds of paradise have fluoresce.
The glow factor of the birds of paradise is apparently important for mating displays. Despite the fact that biofluorescence is especially prominent in men, attracting a partner may not be everything for which it is useful, because these birds can also use it to indicate in other ways and sometimes even for camouflage between the light and the shadows .
“The current very limited number of studies that fluorescence reports at Vogels suggests that this phenomenon was not thoroughly investigated,” the researchers said in a study that was recently published in Royal Society Open Science.
Glow
How do they get that glow? Biofluorescence is a phenomenon that happens when shorter, energetic wavelengths of light, which means that UV, Violet and blue are absorbed by an organism. The energy is then re-broadcast with longer, lower energy-wave length-greens, yellow, oranges and red. The feathers of birds of paradise contain fluorophors, molecules that are undergoing biofluorescence. Specialized filters in the light -sensitive cells of their eyes make their visual system more sensitive to biofluorescence.
