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The clam’s flashes were once thought to be bioluminescence, a result of light-emitting chemical reactions such as those that give fireflies and deep-sea fish their glow. Scientists now know that the display is due entirely to reflected light. Dougherty and her colleagues show that the reflectio...
How Animals Make Light In general, bioluminescence involves the combination of two types of substances in alight-producing reaction. One is aluciferin, or a light-producing substance. The other is aluciferase, or an enzyme that catalyzes the reaction. In some cases, the luciferin is a protein ...
There are a few navigation methods that animals use during migration including the sun, landmarks, the moon and stars, scent, weather, and the earth's magnetic field. Lots More Information Related HowStuffWorks Articles How Evolution Works How Animal Camouflage Works How Bioluminescence Works How...
These animals can both produce red light and detect it when other organisms can't. Want to know more about how and why living things make light? Check out How Bioluminescence Works for a deep dive. We'll heat things up next with incandescence....
Visual communication can be observed over considerable distances, but can be limited in environments with limited visibility, such as night-time, in murky water or in thick vegetation. Many animals, such as fireflies, glow-worms and deep-sea fish usebioluminescenceto communicate in these low-visibi...
In marine organisms, the blue light produced by bioluminescence is most helpful because the wavelength of the light, around 470 nanometers, transmits much farther inwater. Also, most organisms don't have pigments in their visual organs that enable them to see longer (yellow, red) or shorter ...
In contrast, there is strong evidence of a positive association between sexual selection and speciation rate in African lake cichlids22, insects23, and organisms that use bioluminescence as part of courtship, relative to sister clades that use bioluminescence for defense rather than courtship24. These...
And so that's how bioluminescence works -- they're talking with these chemical words. 00:00 The reason Vibrio fischeri is doing that comes from the biology -- again, another plug for the animals in the ocean. Vibrio fischeri lives in this squid. What you're looking at is the ...
Rudolph could use bioluminescence to locate a safe route for Santa's sleigh, but how would it work? HowStuffWorks Rudolph could use something many organisms use on Earth in order to create natural light, a neat little scientific trick called bioluminescence. Some animals can make their own li...