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Related: About this forumThese shallow-water fish can use their eyes like flashlights
These shallow-water fish can use their eyes like flashlights
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Feb. 20, 2018 , 7:01 PM
If youve ever visited an aquarium, you might have noticed tiny sparks of light dancing around the eyes of some fishes (such as those in the bottom row, above). Now, scientists have shown that certain species of fish can use that illuminationa reflection of the light streaming down from abovejust like a flashlight, and redirect it at prey.
Seven years ago, a German zoologist realized that the sparks, produced when fish rotated their eyes, came in two colors: blue and red. Blue was the regular color, and red appeared when fish with special fluorescing cells in their irises turned them on. To find out whether the fish were indeed controlling the flashes, the zoologist and his colleagues experimented with triplefins, finger-size fish that live in the shallow coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In one experiment, they showed the fish either prey or another object. The sparks appeared only in the presence of prey. In another experiment, the fish changed the color of the redirected light to blue or red, based on the background. On blue-hued backgrounds, they used a red light, and on red-tinged backgrounds, they used a blue light, to better illuminate prey, the scientists say. That suggests that the fish have complete control over when and how they spark, and may even be using their flashlight eyes to detect prey, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science. Still to be seen: whether other fish do it, too.
More:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/these-shallow-water-fish-can-use-their-eyes-flashlights
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These shallow-water fish can use their eyes like flashlights (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2018
OP
ffr
(22,670 posts)1. Must be trivia news night, hey Judi?
I love the news you find.
Judi Lynn
(160,543 posts)2. How about "creepy news night?" We get so many, any more!
Wouldn't it be great if we could all glow in the dark!
Thank you, ffr.
Laffy Kat
(16,383 posts)4. Yes, creepy and really fascinating!
Love this stuff.
eppur_se_muova
(36,269 posts)3. So ... emission theory is right, at least in one case ?
Skittles
(153,169 posts)5. THEY THINK THEY ARE ALL THAT
I WILL TEACH THEM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS