The way light interacts with peacock feathers, rich in melanin and air channels trapped in keratin, creates a whole rainbow universe 🌈 Male peacocks use their beautifully coloured feathers to attract females! The number of feathers with an eyespot, the colour and brightness contrast would also play a major role in attracting a mate. I found this feather while doing some cleaning in mom’s apartment and I immediately packed it in my suitcase to look at it when getting back in Montreal! I’m soooooo happy I found it, I took around 120 images of it last night 🌝 Vertebrates are often covered either with fur, scales or feathers to provide warmth and protection. Feathers are found in modern birds and provide novel functions like insulation, communication and flight. The first known bird bearing primitive feathers, named Archaeopteryx, would’ve shared a common ancestor with theropod dinosaurs. Thousands of fossiles also have shown that nonavian dinosaurs had feathers!! They even had feathers that aren’t found in modern birds. Just as our hair, feathers are skin appendages made of keratin and when fully grown, are dead structures. Feathers are lightweight but tough and resistant. They can be found in great numbers; there can be more than 20 000 feathers on a single bird! Feathers are pretty elaborated and they split into branches; the main one is named rachis and divides into barbs, which look like smaller feathers. The barbs then split into barbules, small filaments that end with a hook which is used to keep neighbouring barbs together! There can easily be a million barbules on a single feather. Follicles, where feathers grow and develop, are able to produce feathers of different shapes, sizes and colour patterns depending on the needed function and life stage of a bird. As the bird gets older, feathers are discarded while new ones emerge. To maintain balance when flying, flight and tail feathers are lost in exact pairs! 😄 Video taken with my iPhone 14 Pro mounted on an Olympus BX53 microscope with an @ilabcam adapter 🔬 @olympuslifescience #bird #Science #art #fyp #microscope - @tardibabe