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01
That is Dark....
These fish were discovered to have 99.956% light absorption naturally, but how could such a thing occur? Other species, such as butterflies and other insects that do have some amount of "ultra-black" in their coloration. This helps to some degree with camouflage. However these 16 species of fish were found to have the quality along and throughout their bodies.
As a comparison, VantaBlack is considered 99.96% light absorbent.
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02
Reach For the Sky
18 species of black-colored fish were tested in the study, and more interestingly, the two outliers were also extremely light absorbent, but slightly less-so at 99.94%. What is more incredible is that these species developed these characteristics independent of one another, though the species are distantly linked together.
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03
How Would This Fish Look In an Airport Security Machine
Trying to take a picture of these fish with any sort of proper lighting proves impossible, as the fishes' bodies literally swallow up the light, leaving more or less an outline in any picture taken. It took a great deal of trial and error to find a method to capture these fish properly.
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04
Paging Dentist
What is so unique about these species, is that their melanosomes (skin pigment cells) are packed extremely tightly together, and each have various adaptations for their skin. One species in particular had a specific layer of ultra-black skin on it's belly, presumably to hide bioluminescent food it might have snacked on.
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05
See Anything?
This is the first time scientists have discovered a creature that specifically use their skin pigments to naturally absorb light. Other above-water creatures that have similarly light-absorbing properties rely on light-capturing structures in their bodies. These fish do this through the melanosomes on their skin without needing any additional system or mechanism.
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06
Chasing Its Tail
These fish are an amazing discovery and could bring breakthroughs in camouflage like discussed earlier. However, all of the man-made ultra-black materials currently are made from carbon nanotubes.
Being that these are organically and naturally developed, there is any number of applications for these capabilities to find a biological and repeatable alternative to current methods. It also requires much less effort, as their are fewer necessary mechanisms that have to work, besides just, the densely packed cells themselves which do all the work
Play The Ultimate Game of Underwater Hide and Seek With These Incredible VantaBlack Fish
Vantablack is one of the most light-absorbent materials known, able to absorb up to 99.5% of visible light. This incredible phenomenon was captured expertly by BMW with their promotion of a VantaBlack X6, and has been examined at length by scientists for its potential in camouflage and applications in industrial design. So what if we found this man-made material right underneath our feet? Or more accurately, under the sea.
Karen Osborne and her team discovered that deep in the ocean's depths, there were creatures that had naturally occurring "ultra-black" light absorption. So much so that some of the species discovered with this unique attribute were actually nearly identical in terms of light absorption, to the man-made Vantablack.
Fortunately, even with the challenges of photographing such elusive creatures, the team managed to photograph and study the various species they found to discover there are at least 16 species of fish that can be called ultra-black. So what are these incredible creatures?
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