The Chameleon(TC)

Beyond The Limits(BIL)

Man has reached the moon, he created Big Tankers, fighter Jets, Super Computers what not,.,

But in front of Nature and Nature's activity he is just nothing,we can compare the movie 2012. They have imagined and used nice graphics to show the disasters.

In nature some nice things daily happens, which are just amazing. Like The Cuckoo, Light Bee, Chameleon etc.,

Today again I am going to discuss one more amazing animal or we can say living being. That is Chameleon. After seeing video in YouTube I just thought to write blog on this animal. Really it is beautiful. Rarely we will find to see this animal. First of all identifying or finding this animal is difficult for us. Because it will change its body color according to the surrounding. It is because of its safety, and the survivability.

In physics color takes very important role. As we studied in Solid State Physics, Color centers, Which are mainly due to defects in crystal structure. Spectroscopy is mainly for colors. And even in nanotechnology after synthesizing, they will tune it for different colors. Of course man did it by accident. People are using those colors for many applications. Also in Hand-loom technology colors(Dye) are very important to give colors to our cloths.

Now about Chameleon: How the Color changes ?

Ans: Some chameleon species are able to change their skin colours. Different chameleon species are able to change different colours which can include pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown, light blue, yellow, turquoise and purple.

Some varieties of chameleon - such as the Smith's dwarf chameleon - use their colour-changing ability to blend in with their surroundings, as an effective form of camouflage.Colour change is also used as an expression of the physiological condition of the lizard, and as a social indicator to other chameleons. Some research suggests that social signaling was the primary driving force behind the evolution of colour change, and that camouflage evolved as a secondary concern.

Chameleons have specialized cells, collectively called chromatophores, that lie in layers under their transparent outer skin. The cells in the upper layer, called xanthophores and erythrophores, contain yellow and red pigments respectively. Below these is another layer of cells called iridophores orguanophores, and they contain the colourless crystalline substance guanine. These are particularly strong reflectors of the blue part of incident light. If the upper layer of chromatophores appears mainly yellow, the reflected light becomes green (blue plus yellow). A layer of dark melanincontained in melanophores is situated even deeper under the reflective iridophores. The melanophores determine the 'lightness' of the reflected light. These specialized cells are full of pigment granules, which are located in their cytoplasm. Dispersion of the pigment granules in the cell grants the intensity of appropriate colour. If the pigment is equally distributed in the cell, the whole cell has the intensive colour, which depends on the type of chromatophore cell. If the pigment is located only in the centre of the cell, cell appears to be transparent. All these pigment cells can rapidly relocate their pigments, thereby influencing the colour of the chameleon.

This much of biology and Physics and totally science occurs in Chameleon Body. But nobody knows why it happens. Simply they will compare with personalities. It is none of my business. So I am going to stop here.

mpshridhar

Reference.

Wikipedia for the explanation.

Google for Images,

YouTube for Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMT1FLzEn9I