Scientists: night flying squirrel glow in pink
New data published in the Journal of Mammalogy.
Northern flying squirrels — small squirrels from the USA and Canada at night fluoresce pink under ultraviolet light.
Amazing facts helped to establish Allison Kohler, a graduate of Texas A&M.
Supervising graduate student of Professor John Martin conducted the monitoring with a UV flashlight. He was looking for a fluorescent mosses and lichens. Martin accidentally grabbed a ray the flying squirrel, which ran up to the trough. Under ultraviolet light, the protein turned out to be bright pink.
Fluorescent pink flying squirrel in UV light at night — ScienceDaily https://t.co/HTadTUJMPO pic.twitter.com/Oy0ZyoEgvX
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A scientist has formed a team of researchers who engaged in research samples of flying squirrels at the science Museum of Minnesota. Allison Kohler has studied a huge number of effigies of flying squirrels — they were all fluorescently bright pink. Additional studies of a hundred specimens at the Museum of natural history in Chicago confirmed these observations.
“We checked all three species of North American flying squirrels: Northern flying squirrel, southern flying squirrel and the flying squirrel Humboldt and fluorescently” she said.
Pink color was unique to flying squirrels. Other types of protein there is no such property.
The reasons why proteins fluoresce pink is yet to be determined, but scientists suggest that it may be a way of communication or camouflage.
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