MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Have you ever looked at a bird and wondered, how can it be so red or so blue or so intensely yellow? Well, if you have, then you and several researchers have something in common. A new study finds that some birds do have a way to make their colors so sharp. NPR's Nate Rott has more on this avian technique that has been a secret until now.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: Rosalyn Price-Waldman wants you to think about bird plumage - their feathers - kind of like the shingles on a roof.
ROSALYN PRICE-WALDMAN: So it's like there's a feather, and the tip of one feather actually rests on the base of the adjacent feather.
ROTT: They're layered, with the outermost feathers being the part we all see when one flutters by. Price-Waldman, a researcher at Princeton University, spends a lot of time looking at birds, particularly a type of neotropical songbird.
PRICE-WALDMAN: The Tangara tanagers, which are really, really colorful.
ROTT: Like something out of a kids' book colorful. She was curious - how can their colors be so bright? So she started looking a little closer.
PRICE-WALDMAN: And what we noticed was that underneath this top layer of feathers, they had a kind of secret hidden layer of black or white plumage that's concealed under their colorful, outermost feather tips.
ROTT: Bright white underneath red and yellow feathers, dark black underneath blue and green - Price-Waldman's study, published in the journal Science Advances, finds this base layer can help make the outer colors pop. For example, red and yellow colors in birds are created by pigments absorbing light.
PRICE-WALDMAN: And so what's happening is that light is actually passing through this outermost layer of feathers, being reflected by the white layer back up through that red and yellow plumage, which makes it appear a lot brighter.
ROTT: Blues and greens are created in a completely different way, and that black underlayer...
PRICE-WALDMAN: That helps the blue plumage on top appear really kind of saturated and vibrant.
ROTT: Her study found the same hidden layer existed in some American songbirds, like the flame-orange and coal-black Baltimore oriole.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
ROTT: For birds, feather color in all of its radiance is important. It can provide camouflage, attract mates, tell other birds to chirp off. Price-Waldman says to her, what's so cool about this new finding is that it shows evolutionarily birds are doing something similar to human artists.
PRICE-WALDMAN: When painters are priming their canvases with gesso - with white gesso, that's exactly the same physical phenomenon. It's increasing light-scattering from the canvas in order to make the pigments on top look brighter.
ROTT: Art imitating nature, even if we didn't know it until now.
Nate Rott, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JUICE WRLD SONG, "THE LIGHT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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