A recent discovery by scientists in the United States has started a race amidst the global scientific community to add on to it.?
The study found out the presence of biofluorescence in platypus, meaning the amphibian species was discovered to glow in the dark. Now scientists in Australia confirm the same, having found other mammals and marsupials also glow under UV light.
Kenny Travouillon, a Palaeontologist who works as the curator of Mammalogy at the Western Australian Museum, has shared results from his own tests on the topic. The results coincide with the recently published research in the journal?Mammalia, adding bilbies to the list of animals that glow under?UV light.?
Travouillon decided to test the specimen in his Museum after reading the research. "We borrowed it [a UV light] and turned off the lights in the collection and looked around for what was glowing and not glowing," Dr Travouillon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"The first one we checked was the platypus obviously. We shone the light, and they were also glowing, it confirmed the research." Then they tried the light on other specimens in their collection.
Dr Travouillon shared the results in a tweet, including pictures of one particular species glowing in the dark. He found bilbies, desert-dwelling marsupials found in Australia, possessed the ability as their ears and tails shone bright under the UV light.
¡°couldn¡¯t resist trying bilbies... their ears and tails shine bright like a diamond!¡± he wrote in the tweet.
In addition to bilbies, bandicoots were reported to glow "bright pink on its flanks" in another tweet.
Until the recent research, biofluorescence was known to be limited in some species of insects and sea creatures. The fact that Australian mammals possess the same ability has raised several questions to the humans¡¯ understanding of evolution.
Australian scientists are hence working together to confirm the findings. The larger question that looms is why these animals exhibit biofluorescence.
"We tried on marsupial moles and wombats," Dr Travouillon said to ABC. "We did on the carnivorous marsupials and they did not glow at all.¡±
He states the one understandable reason is that "if their prey can see UV light, they would not be able to hide from them."