Mystery of these nearly transparent fish solved: Why do they shine like rainbows?

Surely you have seen the transparent fish, one of the extraordinary natural beauties that we often see on social media. scientific name ‘Kryptopterus vitreolus’ The most striking thing about these huge creatures, which are living beings, is that they are transparent.

Due to the fact that they are transparent, they sometimes even cause discoloration. they can even reflect rainbow colors. Of course people don’t think, these creatures are transparent, okay.

So how can these fish sparkle like a rainbow?

Qibin Zhao, a physicist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, was also curious about this question and began researching this creature. ghost catfish, allows 90% of the light to pass directly through your body. It also has no scales and its skin is about 20 micrometers thin.

But that doesn’t explain why the fish reflect the colors of the rainbow. To explain this situation, researchers by separating the skin of the back and abdominal muscles They cut the fish into pieces.

The researchers shone a white laser on the skin of the fish and radiated it went right through the skin. However, the same was not true for the muscles. Something in them causes light waves to fluctuate in a way known as diffraction and it had a rainbow effect.

Each muscle is made up of elastic units called sarcomeres. Using scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopes, the researchers discovered that these fibrous units behaves like diffraction gratings and found that it split the beam of light into a rainbow as it passed through the structure.

The directions of the fish as they move create different angles at which the light hits the muscles and muscles causes the colors broken by the muscles to appear as rainbows.

The researchers state that other fish also have the same muscle type, but because their skin is not transparent, the shine cannot be seen from the outside. Which, as researchers have already explained, are these creatures. they are not completely transparent.

The team estimates that the reason why this fish of the Kryptopterus vitreolus species glows in color is because distract the hunters and developed a trait for survival. Another possibility is that the fish use it as a communication system. Because these fish are very social species that live in communes.