Science in the Library

Today we learned about color changing animals and how they're able to expand or contract special pigment sacs called chromatophores in their skin, in order to give the overall visual effect of having changed color. In reality, they have just chosen which pigments to expand and which ones to shrink, but all the pigments are there! We talked about how octopuses do this and how they also have papillae in their skin that can change the texture of their skin from smooth to rough or bumpy, which gives them an added camouflage benefit. To demonstrate how this works, I programmed a simulation of chromatophores expanding and contracting to match their environment using Scratch. You just click on the words Brown, Red, or Yellow to make the background change, and watch as the chromatophores change by expanding or contracting to emphasize that color! Click on the picture to go to the Scratch website and play with this simulation. Our hands on project today was pretty easy--to build a ...