Stuff You Should Know - How do butterfly wings get their color?

Episode Date: July 8, 2010

Butterflies' wings are colored as a result of iridescence; this fascinating optical phenomenon is the result of light refracting off transparent surfaces. Josh and Chuck reveal how pigmentation, iridescence, light and butterfly wings work in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chucker's Flutter by Bryant. No, I'm a caterpillar and one day I might be a beautiful butterfly. Yes. You're a lump of coal. Yes. But you're going to be a diamond someday, Chuck.

Who's saying that? David Elko. Maybe Johnny Cash. No. Originally. It was one of those old guys. It's a good one. Widespread panic.

Did they cover that? Really? Yeah. But it was like a 19 minute version. Yeah. Right. It went a little long, you could say. How are you doing, Chuck?

I'm good. I have freshly shaved my head, like you. Yeah. No, mine's not fresh. Mine's shaggy. Well, yeah, but we're both kind of onion heads now. You look good. Where I'm usually not.

You look pretty. Thank you. Do you have any pictures of yourself? No. Not yet. Okay. That's later. So, Chuck, you've heard about this oil spill, right?

Yeah. I had a feeling you might tie this in. Devastation. Yeah. Dead wildlife. Yeah. Injured economies. Yeah.

Obama's Katrina. Yeah. There's one thing that has been conspicuously absent in my estimation. Beautiful. Nobody's talking about iridescence. No one's talking about how pretty the oil slick is. Yeah. That's because it's horribly ugly.

It is unless you stand at a certain angle and then you're like, oh, this is kind of nice, actually. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. I figure you're headed. We're talking about iridescence in this one because the shimmery color changing quality called iridescence.

Yes. That oil spills feature are in common with something called butterflies, the wings of butterflies. And I can tell you that 24 hours ago, I had no idea why a butterfly, a butterfly's wings were iridescent. Now I do. This is why I love episodes like this because it's, here is why. There's no, maybe it's kind of like this or we don't really know.

So you and I get the conjecture like Jack asks us all day long, right? Right. Instead, it's, science has figured out why this happens and you and I are going to explain it to people. So Chuck, let's do that right now. Let's talk about why a butterfly's wings are iridescent. Okay. Well, there's a couple of reasons they have their striking color.

Iridescence is the main one, but we probably need to go ahead and get pigment and just ordinary color out of the way. That's pigment. Josh is coloring matter that you find in like cells and tissues. And the deal with pigment is it is the same from every angle. You can get up under it, you can get on top of it, you can sneak up behind it. You can get all up on that all up in it, but it always looks the same. Right.

That's just called. That's what I call it ordinary color. And the reason why is that any, a given pigment will absorb all colors except one. Yeah. Say, right? Like chlorophyll. Sure. It absorbs all colors except green, which it reflects, which causes something to look

green. Like a plant. A plant. Sure. It's one. Melanin tends to absorb everything but yellow, giving things a brownish color. Right. Well, yeah.

And that's albinism. That means you have no melanin. Right. You're lacking a pigment. Same with paints. Right. These are all just pigments. These things don't inherently have a color.

They just absorb certain colors and reflect others back. Yeah. It's pretty standard stuff. But you know, redheads have, they think they have an additional iron-based pigment. Oh, really? Isn't their color? Interesting. Yeah.

Their freakish hue. Yeah. Poor ginger kids, man. They are really taking it. I love redheads though. Do you? Well, I mean. Okay.

Yeah. Actually, I just like the red. Like really redheaded people. It's kind of cool looking at me. I'll just go on record with that. Like red or orange? Because there is a big difference, man. I'm not talking strawberry blonde.

I'm talking like really, really redhead. Just shocking red. Shocking ginger redheads. Okay. You like staring at them? I do. Okay. Don't stare too hard.

Okay. Freaks people out. You'll go blind. All right. So that's pigments. They're pretty standard. And one can argue boring stuff, right? Yeah.

Pigments don't give anything iridescence. No. They just reflect light. Sure. And you know, that's that. Right. This is this kind of super spectacular reflection of color. Almost shimmery.

Yes. That changes. Actually, the color changes if you move. Uh-huh. So iridescence is generally relegated to the observer, depending on where you're standing, that will change the color, how spectacular color is. Right. And again, we know why, especially when it comes to butterfly wings, right?

Right. We had mentioned just a couple of others before we move on, like the Japanese beetle, that green on the wings. Yes. Iridescent. Yeah. Mother of Pearl, seashells. Yeah.

Some fish scales. Yeah. And like bubbles. Peacock feathers. Peacock. Well, that's a huge one. Did I tell you that there's a peacock in our neighborhood? No.

I was walking with Emily the other day, walking the dogs the other morning, and we looked up, we heard this weird sound. Yeah, it sounds like, help! Help! It's very unsettling. Yeah. I thought someone was crying for help, and I looked up, and literally at the apex of this roof of this house was a full-on peacock standing there.

Weird. Had a guy loose, or did they keep it in the backyard, so people keep peacocks. Yeah, the guy has two peacocks. Weird. The neighbor was out, and I was looking at him, and he went, yeah, he's got peacocks. I was like, that's sort of odd. Were you staring at it like it was a full-on redhead? I was, and I said, that's sort of weird, and he went, yeah, and loud.

Yeah, I'll bet. So. Help! Yeah. It was interesting, and it was fascinating. They are. They're gorgeous. Yes.

And actually, peacock feathers led to the investigation of iridescence. Newton. And Newton, eventually, Thomas Boyle was the one who went, ka-ching, that's the way it happened. So we were talking about- Robert Boyle, sorry. Robert Boyle, thanks. Thanks.

One of the Boyle brothers. Exactly. We were talking about how pigments reflect just one color, right? And its parent objects have the ability to reflect all colors, right? With an oil slick, or with a bubble, you have two surfaces, right? You have- we'll talk about a bubble. We'll talk about the oil slick. Okay.

The oil slick is oil floating on water, right? Yes. You have- so you have the top film of the oil slick, lights passing through it, although some's bouncing back. Right. Which you will see. With your eye. And some can make it to the water beneath, the stuff that passes through the top film.

Right. And then can be reflected back. And you will see that. Some can be reflected back, right? Right. Now, if the light that's reflected from the top is also reflected from the bottom. If they're in sync. If the phases match up.

Right. And a phase is the position of the trough and the crest, because remember, light exists on a wavelength. Right. Light is like a regular wave or like a roller coaster, if you're a little more simple. And like you said, if they match up as if they were on top of each other, then you're going to get your distance. Right.

So, Chuck, follow me on this one. Okay. To the ends of the earth. All right. So, go. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Okay.

So, the beep. That's a crest. Uh-huh. And then the boop. That's a trough. An off-key trough. Okay. So, start going.

Beep, boop. Beep, boop. So, this is Chuck being a wave of light, a wavelength of light. Right. Yeah. Reflecting. He's just reflected. The moment he starts, he's reflected off the surface of a transparent object.

Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Yeah. Beep, boop. Right. Beep, boop. Okay. So, now, I'm light coming in and I'm going to come in and start after I've just reflected

off the bottom surface of, say, an oil slick. Right. All right. So, you want me to do this again? So, Chuck has already reflected off the top surface. I made it through to the bottom surface and now I'm reflecting off. Okay. So, Chuck.

Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Now, let's say I come in at, like, halftime. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Beep, boop.

Beep, boop. It's all screwed up, right? Yeah. That sounds awful. It does sound awful. And when you're speaking of light, it sounds like this. Right? Nothing.

They cancel each other out. Right, Chuck, if my phase is equal to yours, but, say, a full measure behind, it sounds like this. Go ahead. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. Beep, boop.

Beep, boop. Right? So, it sounded nice. It sounded louder. It didn't sound nice, but it sounded louder. It wasn't all discordant. Right. So, what just happened was we amplified the beep, boop.

Right. Right? Yeah. Exactly. So, what is it? Constructive interference. That's right. And that's, I don't want to say good and bad, because this really scientists would say it

is neither good nor bad. Right. But I'm going to say that's the good kind, because that's what gives you iridescence. The bad kind could be destructive interference, and that, like you said, that cancels each other out, making something like less iridescent, not iridescent at all. Right. So, that's it. Close.

That's not entirely it, right? Because consider this, Chuck. The light, the light as we see it, exists on a spectrum, right? Sure. So, on one hand you have about a wavelength of 400 nanometers, violet light. On the other end of the spectrum that we can see is red light, which has a wavelength of about 700 nanometers, right? Right.

Okay. If you go a little beyond the violet, you get bluer than blue, aka ultraviolet. Which we all love. Right. If you go beyond the red, you have redder than red, or infrared, right? Right. We can't see either of those, but we can see within that spectrum, from violet to red. Yes.

And it's based on wavelength. If we, if you take white light, right, like sunlight, and you put it, if you project it onto a transparent object, all of the colors, remember the pink, flowy, dark side of the moon album cover? Of course. It's white light going into a prism, and then coming out in its separate forms. And all its psychedelic glory. Right.

Now imagine that that's static. Like it's not changing position. If you are shooting a beam of white light onto a bubble, depending on where you stand, the angle of reflection, right, of refraction, I'm sorry, depends on what color you're going to see. So if you move across your angle, you're going to see a different color. And hence, this explains the color changing of iridescence. Right.

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with direct to consumer providers. Teladocs available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use Teladoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc.com slash stuff to register or schedule a visit today. Visit teladoc.com slash stuff for JD power 2021 award information. Visit JD power.com slash awards.

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huge bubbles, the huge bubbles? If you ever do that, do a little experiment and look at it from different angles, jump around, walk around and you're going to see some color change. Right. Have you ever seen a bubble pop in slow mo, that super slow mo? No, but isn't that an episode of that one show? Time worked. Yeah.

Yeah, the discovery show. It is super cool, dude. If you look at it in slow motion, you like would pop the bubble and you know, when you see it in regular motion, it looks like it just pops in a big burst. But from where you touch, it spreads in an arc all around the whole thing and you see it slowly popping as it goes around. It's really cool. Nice.

That's neither here nor there though. But it's still pretty. It's really cool. Like you're a distance, right? Yes. So what we have now is if light from white light hits a transparent object and it's a multi-layered transparent object, say like oil on top of water or one side of a bubble and a bottom side of the bubble, some light's going to reflect off, some's going to make

it through the bottom, some of that will reflect off, most will go through. But if the light from the bottom and the top are in phase with one another, in an even phase, separated by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 wavelengths rather than 1.35 wavelengths, they'll be in phase and they'll amplify each other. If it's white light, then we're going to see, depending on our angle, all the colors of the rainbow in this iridescent state. So what does this have to do with butterfly wings? I'll tell you buddy.

Butterfly wings are transparent and the deal is why they look so striking compared to, let's say, a bubble, which is pretty but not as striking as a butterfly. Because there are many, many more layers stacked on top of each other that the light has to go through. When all those are in phase, you get like super iridescence. Right. So with a bubble, you have two chances, right? You have the top and the bottom.

Two lousy chances. Right, with a butterfly wing, the cuticle of the scale of the butterfly wing, say, has maybe a dozen. So every beam of light, every wavelength of light has a dozen chances to reflect back. Say half of those are in phase. Pretty cool. Yeah. And also, depending on how, because the surfaces, if you look at a butterfly cuticle, it looks

kind of like a Christmas tree. So there's like a, it looks like a Christmas tree, basically. Like a Lego Christmas tree, we'll say. It's chitin. But the scales, don't you think I'm out of the scales? Yeah. Yeah, the scales. Well, those cuticles that make up the scales.

Yeah, that's chitin. That's the same thing we have in like our hair. It's protein in our fingernails. Oh, okay. Nice. So go ahead. Okay. Sorry.

So as it goes down the tree, you know, they get wider, the surfaces get wider and each one can bounce light back off, but they're spaced evenly. So let's say that the space in between is 200 nanometers and blue light is 400 nanometers in wavelength. Since the 200 is half of 400, it's going to give blue light a better chance to reflect back in phase, which is why I say on like the blue morpho butterfly, which has a space of 200 nanometers between the scales, the space in the scales appears so blue because blue has a likelier chance of reflecting back in phase and being amplifying in this iridescent

manner. Right. And the morpho, doesn't that actually venture into the ultraviolet spectrum? Yeah. Remember the angle? Yeah. So let's say at the right is red and at the left is violet. If you move too far to the left, everything's gone because you've moved out of the visible

spectrum of light and now all you're seeing is the brown pigment. But who can see it is the butterfly. Yeah. The monarchs are actually in their migration, their huge migration every year. They use ultraviolet markings or ultraviolet light for guide posts basically, right? Yes, they do. And it also, the other effect or the other reason that you have this iridescence on the scales is it soaks up heat because butterflies are cold-blooded, so they rely on like the

sun to be able to function. So the fact that they're soaking up this heat from the sun allows them to fly. Right. Which is pretty cool. And we also remember pigment, don't forget, still plays a role in this too, right? So if you have a butterfly scale that's constructed, that contains chlorophyll. So you have a green pigment. Yes.

Let's go with blue. Okay. No, let's go with yellow. Okay. Say it's a butterfly scale that's constructed melanin. So you have yellow already, which it's reflecting back yellow and a monochromatic blue light hits it. Right, right.

It's going to appear to us as green because the color mixing still has an effect, right? So pigment, structural color, green. Can we talk about the wings for a second too? Yeah. Because I know people are going to write in and say, that's really cool, but is it true that butterflies will die if you touch their wings? Sort of not completely. You can touch a butterfly wing.

Like if you've ever touched a butterfly wing, you'll notice you have like powder on your hands. Yeah, those are the scales. Those are the scales. They are that fine that they kind of disintegrate into powder. And in theory, you can touch a butterfly wing without killing them, but if you break it, they have little veins. They're all connected by little veins.

So essentially, if you disconnect the veins from the forewing and the hindwing, that's when the butterfly is going to die. And they're so tender that it's really easy to happen. So in effect, you probably will kill a butterfly if you mess with their wings, but if you just happen to graze against it, maybe not. No need to squish it after just such a slight intrusion, right? Yeah. And moths, I think, get a bum wrap because they're not as pretty.

Yeah. Because they're mainly mel- what was it? Melanin. Melanin. Yeah. Mainly like brown and yellow, black and white. And they also have a frenulum, which is a spine, and butterflies don't have that. Right.

Also, moths tend to be fatter and fly at dusk or night. Well, yeah. And that's why butterflies get all the credit because you're out on a nice spring day in the garden and butterflies are everywhere. Right. And then at night, you're hanging out by the porch and you're freaked out by the moths everywhere, like going toward the light. Well not only that, the structure of a moth's wing is very, very similar to the structure

of a butterfly's transparent, filmy scales. For some reason, I guess because they do fly at night, they're not iridescent. Right. Because they don't appear iridescent, although they would in sunlight. But they're part of the same family, scientifically. Yeah. Big happy family. Yeah.

What was the family? Lipidoptera. Was that it? Lipidoptera. Nice. Lipidoptera. There's like 150,000 varieties within that family. Yeah.

And lipidoptera means scaled wings. Boom. Yeah. It's a great place to finish, don't you think? Sure. You got any nails? Should we recap? Oh, I don't think so.

We've already recap the couple of times. You think we've explained it well? I think so. All right. It's 2022 and things look different, like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non-emergency situations like a sinus infection or allergy, and that's why Teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video.

That's right. Doctors are standing by 24-7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why Teladoc is ranked number one by JD Power and Telehealth Satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teladoc's available through most major health plans and many employers, but even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use Teladoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc.com slash stuff

to register or schedule a visit today. That's T-E-L-A-D-O-C dot com slash stuff. For JD Power 2021 award information, visit JD Power dot com slash awards. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on, now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long-term goals backed by the expertise, strategy, and resources of a top 10 commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and

help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at capitalone.com slash commercial because I feel more confused than I did before. If you want to learn more about Butterfly Wings and their striking colors, type in your email address at capitalone.com slash capitalone.com slash capitalone.com slash capitalone.com slash capitalone.com slash capitalone. on the blog. There's an image gallery on HowStuffWorks and go on to our blogs at HowStuffWorks.com and look for the blog post entitled, We Got Your Stuff You Should Know T-Shirt Contest

Winners Right Here. That's right. And that'll take you into the site to check them out. You can also get the shirts on the Discovery Channel Store, right? Yeah, they're for sale. Yeah, you just go on to the, I think, store.discovery.com and do a search for Stuff You Should Know and it brings up all five of these magnificent t-shirts, right? Heck yeah.

So, the names of the winning designers, the five brilliant individual human beings who created these amazing designs, right? Yes. Their names are what, Chuck? Well, first, these are in no particular order, by the way. We have Peter, Fiek or Fiek. Or Fiek. We've been debating endlessly. And he did a really cool design of this old school microphone and it's sort of logo looking. It makes us look like we're really pros.

Yeah, I call it Hot Mike. Hot Mike? Yeah. I like it. And then, of course, there's Suki Anderson. Yeah. Out of Kentucky, I believe. I think so.

And she made what I think is the coolest picture I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. It's the baby with the fly on its forehead. Yes. And it says, don't worry, there is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, I said on the blog that it's unsettling and comforting at the same time and it's very hard to achieve. Agreed.

So, that was one of our favorite ones. And then we went with Brad Wilson's brain design, which is awesome. Yeah. We got a lot of brain designs. So you guys were thinking along the same lines, which means you're all smart and cool. Yeah. And that was the brain as a representation of our show is really, I think, pretty cool. And this was what we thought looked best on a t-shirt.

Brad nailed it. Yeah, he nailed it. Definitely. Matt Stevenson came up with what I've dubbed the woodcut parade. Right. Right? Our fans are going to love this one. Yeah, it's a series of medieval characters, I would say, a skeleton, a bishop, or a monk,

a jester, and they are carrying banners, let's say S-Y-S-K. Yeah, they're leading the parade, the Stuff You Should Know parade, from medieval times. Yeah. And I said on the site, it looks like a parade on a high behind a tree and watch. Right. It's awesome. It's very cool. And then lastly, Chuck, I'm going to leave this one to you because I can't pronounce

this guy's last name. Yes, we have Scott, Y-A-C-Y-S-H-Y-N. I'm going to say Yaksin. Yaksin. Yaksin. Yaksin. Yaksin. Scott, whatever your last name is pronounced.

Yakesin. Let's try that one too. Scott, Yakesin. Yeah. If that is you, you are one heck of a designer, my friend, and you did the very cool caricature of Josh and I, and from our mouths and balloons, you have different caricatures of different episodes. And there's so much camaraderie between us.

Oh yeah. You just look like we are having a heck of a time during the podcast as a 60s illustration. It's very cool. One of my favorite ones too. It is just super awesome. So Scott, Matt, Brad, Suki, Peter, thank you very much to all of you guys, and thank you to everybody who sent in from something created in rich text format to something that was obviously made by a professional graphic designer.

We appreciate all of you guys, and thank you very much for taking the time to lend us your brains and creativity. That's awesome. Yeah. We were blown away. It was very cool. You're all very talented. Okay.

And now let's go back to our stupid selves from the past. Yes. I predict that it's going, I'm going to say some asinine thing about the handy search bar. Okay. Watch this. That means, since I said handy search bar, Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah.

Listener mail. Josh, I'm just going to call this stuff you should know, Educating Prisoners of America. Oh, I like this one. This is a good one. Well, Prisoners of Virginia at least, right? Yeah, which is in America. Isn't it still? It's a commonwealth.

I don't know if it counts. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Weirdos. All right. This is from Maria in Amelia, Virginia. I guess they have a prison there. Hi, guys.

I thought you might be interested to know that I use your podcast as a resource to teach writing to inmate students. I'm a GED teacher at a men's prison in Virginia. Writing is one of the weakest skills for my students, and many of them never learned to write as far as secondary school, and they were afraid to write as adults, so they're sort of illiterate or completely illiterate in some cases. Well, I mean, think about it. Chuck, what is writing if not a series of choices of what you're going to share with

people? It can be very intimidating. Yeah. I burn your podcast to a CD and replay one in class because we don't have internet for obvious reasons. The men listen to your podcast, they take notes, and then they must write an article based on what we said. They practice writing sentences and paragraphs in this way.

The subject matter is of interest to them, some more than others. I'm afraid to play the moonshine one as much as I would like to. I know they would be interested even if I skip the parts where you make the still and give the general recipe, so she won't do that because, you know, they'll build a moonshine still. I'll bet they already know how to ferment orange juice. Yeah, I think so. Some of these guys have been down a long, long time, so they appreciate something to think

about that isn't about sentencing and parole hearings. Thank you for your material. My family and I enjoy the podcast, and they do a real service to people, so we are actually educating prisoners of America. I know. That's awesome. So if you guys are in prison right now, if you're in the pokey, in the huskow, and you're listening now, we just want to say good luck.

You can turn your life around, do your hard time, come out a better person, don't do crimes again, and get your GED and get a job, and good luck to you, that's what I say. And remember, when you make a decision in writing, don't look back. Really? Is that your advice? Yeah. That is my advice, actually. You can always write something else.

That's a good point. Yeah. If you want to let us know how we are changing the world for the better with this podcast, send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

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