BUTTERFLIES are one of the most beautiful
& colorful creations of nature. Flying from one flower to another,
their bright colored wings changes color and seem to shimmer. Actually the
colors we see come from a complex chemical & structural system in their
wings. If you look under a low power microscope, each scale of butterfly is
only one color like a mosaic.
So, the question is "How we perceive those brilliant butterfly colors”??
WELL, these colors come from two sources:
pigmented (or original) colors
and structural colors.
The ordinary color comes from normal
chemical pigments that absorb certain wavelengths of light and reflect
other colors which you see.
For example: when you see orange, yellow
and black colors on a butterfly, that comes from melanin ( that
same pigment that tans your skin).
More interesting are the structural
colors of butterflies, which results from the specific structure of their
wings. As for example, when you see blue, purple or white colors on
butterflies, that’s because of structural colors.
Actually, their wings are covered with a
lot of tiny scales which are stacked over one another in form of layers and
each layer is separated by little pockets of air. So, when the observer
moves, due to the unique shape of each tiny scale color appears to
fluctuate or shimmer and this quality is called iridescence. Iridescence happens
when light passes through a transparent and multilayered surface, it is
reflected more than once. These multiple reflections concentrate and
compound one another and cause more vibrant colors.
These colors help butterflies to
communicate also as in ways to attract other butterflies, to camouflage or
to send warn signals. And this iridescence quality is also shared by some
fishes, humming bird or peacocks.
So, that was the mystery behind the
beautiful colors of butterflies, and next time when you find a butterfly
flying before you, watch for its colors!!
