{"id":3241,"date":"2015-03-11T08:48:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T08:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=3241"},"modified":"2015-03-11T08:48:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T08:48:47","slug":"the-secret-of-chameleon-behind-their-color-change-tiny-crystals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/the-secret-of-chameleon-behind-their-color-change-tiny-crystals\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret of chameleon behind their color change: Tiny crystals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3242\" src=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg\" alt=\"167542404\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-1024x1024.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/a>Chameleon is popular among us with its unique ability to change color. This mystery now has been solved by the researcher scientists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The skin of reptiles are made up of tiny\u00a0\u00a0mirror-like crystals which contains the reflective\u00a0pigment cells called iridophores according\u00a0\u00a0to a new study published in the journal\u00a0<em style=\"font-style: italic;\">Nature Communications<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When the chameleon gets excited, or anticipates danger, the iridophores expand or contract to enable the crystals to reflect different levels of light, thereby changing its skin color.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The researchers used a combination of microscopy, high-resolution videography and color-based numerical modeling to arrive at this discovery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWhen the skin is in the relaxed state, the nanocrystals in the iridophore cells are very close to each other \u2014 hence, the cells specifically reflect short wavelengths, such as blue,\u201d Michel Milinkovitch, a professor of genetics and evolution at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the lead author of the study,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0c97d2;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.livescience.com\/50096-chameleons-color-change.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">told Live Science<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Milinkovitch further explained that, when excited, the nanocrystals spread further apart to reflect longer wavelengths like yellow, red and orange, which combine with blue to produce different hues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Source: By\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: 500; color: #e90606;\" href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/author\/rishi-iyengar\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Rishi Iyengar<\/span><\/a>, Times<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chameleon is popular among us with its unique ability to change color. This mystery now has been solved by the researcher scientists.\u00a0 The skin of reptiles are made up of tiny\u00a0\u00a0mirror-like crystals which contains the reflective\u00a0pigment cells called iridophores according\u00a0\u00a0to a new study published in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications. When the chameleon gets excited, or anticipates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",1200,1200,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",750,750,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404-1024x1024.jpg",750,750,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",1200,1200,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",1200,1200,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",800,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",570,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",600,600,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",600,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",490,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",360,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",65,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",640,640,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",96,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/167542404.jpg",150,150,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Laxman Dangol"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/biology\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Biology<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/research\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}