WITH ITS ELECTRORECEPTOR-SPOTTED BILL, HORNED pads where you might expect teeth, and status as one of only five species of mammals that lay eggs, the platypus was already one of the most unique creatures on Earth. And now researchers in the U.S. and Australia have found the animal exhibits another curious characteristic: fluorescence.
This intrigued Kenny Travouillon, the curator of mammalogy at the Western Australian Museum, and his colleagues, including research associate Linette Umbrello. “It was the first Australian mammal found to be fluorescent,” Travouillon says. Science has already uncovered how frogs light up the night and birds glow under a blacklight, but this discovery entered new animal territory. They decided to shine a UV light on their museum’s mammal collection (including preserved and frozen specimens), to see if any others glowed in the dark. The platypus wasn’t the odd one out, after all—they found the majority fluoresced.
“In some ways, this study confirms what’s been long suspected: fluorescence is the rule rather than the exception,” says Lisa Gershwin, the founder of Glow Show Tasmania and a marine biologist who’s conducted research on fluorescence. She says others, including herself and zoologist Linda Reinhold, have published papers about the topic, “but this study shows it on a massive scale.”
Hellbound and Down 