Zebras, a children’s tale goes, became striped after “standing half in the shade and half out of it.” While the author, Rudyard Kipling, wasn’t a biologist, his story may hold some truth: research ...

Animals are living color. Wasps buzz with painted warnings. Birds shimmer their iridescent desires. Fish hide from predators with body colors that dapple like light across a rippling pond. And all ...

Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it. Peacocks, panther chameleons, scarlet ...