Featured Blog Posts
Herp Video of the Week: Bath time!
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Check out this video "Logan giving Buddy a bath," submitted by kingsnake.com user spotsowner.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!
West African Gaboon viper may hold secret to ultimate darkness
The complete article is here.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Scientists believe the black markings of the West African Gaboon viper may hold the secret to creating materials with a powerful ability to absorb light.
From The Age:
The West African Gaboon viper, one of the largest in Africa and a master of camouflage, has dark spots in the geometrical pattern of its skin that are deep, velvety black and reflect very little light.
Interwoven with white- and brown-coloured scales that are very reflective, this creates a high contrast that renders the snake difficult to spot on the richly-patterned rainforest floor.
A team of German scientists set out to find the secret behind the black spots' ultra darkness, and found the scale surface was made up of tightly-packed, leaf-like microstructures covered in turn with nanometre-sized ridges.
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One nanometre is equivalent to a billionth of a metre.
Writing in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, the team theorised that the microstructures and nanostructures, which protrude at slightly different angles, scatter and trap incoming light.
"The structure based velvet black effect could also be potentially transferred to other materials," the scientists wrote.
The complete article is here.





