Jay's feather reflectivity

An example of a structural blue in an animal: the wing feather of a Jay. The blue is, like the blue sky, produced by Tyndall (Rayleigh) scattering from a fine keratin matrix within the feather. The gradation from black/dark blue to light blue is produced by the varying depth of black melanin along the barb providing a background against which the scattering is observed. The spectrum shows how the blue varies along the barb.

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