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We live in a world ablaze with colour...
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..rainbows and rainforests, oceans and humanity.
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Earth is the most colourful place we know of.
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It's easy to take our colourful world for granted.
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Red, yellow and blue are some of the first words we learn.
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But there's a reason why our world looks so vibrant.
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That reason is life.
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I'm Dr Helen Czerski.
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I'm a physicist and when I look at colour, I don't just see beauty,
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I see some of the most intricate processes in nature.
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It's flashing light and it's a new kind of colour.
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The colours of life have exploded across our planet,
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from the palest shades to the most eye-popping, vivid hues.
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And each and every one of them
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has played a part in the spread of life across the Earth.
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This is communication in colour.
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To understand the hidden mechanisms of colour is to uncover
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the fundamental processes at work in every living thing.
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Deep down physiological changes, broadcast in colour.
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In this programme, I'm going in search of the colours
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that have driven the spread of life across the Earth
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and painted our planet in glorious multicolour.
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In its earliest days, the colours of the Earth
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were forged by the forces that shaped the planet.
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Fire and ice,
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water and rock.
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The raw, early Earth had plenty of colour,
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but that was nothing compared with what was going to come next.
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That canvas was about to be painted with a vast, new palette,
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and the source of those colours was life.
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That story begins with one colour,
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without which life as we know it wouldn't exist.
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And to see this vital colour in all its glory,
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I need a bird's eye view.
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From this tower, as far as I can see, the world is green.
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The forest here is alive.
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It's green and healthy
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and green is such an important colour for our planet.
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But there's a question that goes with this familiar view
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and we almost never ask it.
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There are hundreds of species down there, hundreds of plants,
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and they are all green.
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Why is that?
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To answer that, you need to look in a very different environment.
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It's out here that we can shed light
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on why so much of our planet is green.
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With me is Stephanie Henson from the University of Southampton.
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We think that life began in the oceans about 3.5 billion years ago,
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and that's because at the time,
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the land would have just been completely uninhabitable.
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Ultraviolet radiation from the sun was beating down
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and just irradiating everything that tried to come out onto land.
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Back then, there was no ozone layer
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to stop the destructive UV rays reaching Earth.
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So, life evolved in the ocean, where it was protected by water.
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All life needs energy,
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and these earliest life forms used the chemicals
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that seeped through the sea floor at hydrothermal vents.
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But hydrothermal vents aren't everywhere on the sea floor.
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No, that's right. The first organisms to use chemicals
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would have been concentrated just in these little pockets.
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If life was ever to expand beyond these isolated pockets,
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it needed to find a new source of energy.
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And in the ocean today,
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we can find an ancient species that did just that.
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It doesn't look like there's anything in there, does it?
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No, but that'll be full of life.
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Through a small field microscope,
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we can see that what appears to be clear water
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is actually bursting with microscopic creatures.
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Look even closer,
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here magnified many thousand times,
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and their complex and intricate forms are revealed.
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Amongst these bizarre-looking organisms is the ancient life form
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we've been looking for - cyanobacteria.
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Cyanobacteria are still around in very much the same form
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as they first evolved, almost 3.5 billion years ago.
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These tiny organisms evolved a process
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that would dramatically change the colour of the planet,
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and the course of life itself.
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They took sunlight, air, and water,
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and transformed them into sugar, storing the sun's energy.
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Up until that point, organisms had only been able to use chemicals
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as an energy source and suddenly, this new organism appears
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that can use light directly from the sun.
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Cyanobacteria had evolved one of the most enduring
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and vital processes in the living world...
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..photosynthesis.
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At its heart is chlorophyll, a chemical that can capture sunlight.
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It has a very distinctive colour...
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..green.
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And with chlorophyll,
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life was no longer limited to hydrothermal vents.
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It could spread across the oceans,
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creating vast swathes of green.
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But life didn't stop there.
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Because photosynthesis produces a very important by-product.
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The waste product of photosynthesis is oxygen.
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So before these guys evolved, the cyanobacteria,
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there wasn't very much oxygen around on Earth.
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Suddenly, when cyanobacteria evolved,
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a lot of oxygen was being produced as a waste product.
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That oxygen entering the atmosphere started to create an ozone layer.
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And the ozone layer is like sunscreen for the Earth -
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it keeps out the damaging UV.
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That's right. It really allows life as we know it today to evolve.
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With ozone now blocking harmful UV rays,
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life could make a giant leap -
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out of the ocean and onto the land...
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..painting the planet green.
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It's strange to think that all the photosynthesis going on around me
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started with a tiny creature in the ocean.
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Chlorophyll is the key to photosynthesis,
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and the leaves around me are full of it.
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It's what gives them their wonderful green colour.
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And the way it does this
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reveals something essential about all colour.
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To show you, I need to escape the sunlight, so I've set up this hide.
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This light represents the sun.
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And I've got a prism here,
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so I can split white light into all the colours of the spectrum.
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And these fall on leaves, so here's a leaf.
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So, if I add another leaf, and another one...
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Now, what's coming through the leaves looks very, very different -
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and what I can see is that the only light that's getting
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through all the leaves is the green light.
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There's this green stripe along the back here,
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but the red light and the blue light have gone.
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Red light and blue light doesn't pass through.
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It's stopped, it's captured
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and it's used by the leaf to keep itself alive.
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The chlorophyll in the leaf
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is absorbing the red and blue wavelengths of light
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and using their energy to carry out photosynthesis.
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But it doesn't absorb the green wavelengths.
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The green light is actually the waste,
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it's the only bit of the spectrum that they're not using.
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So, this is why we see leaves as green.
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And it tells us something fascinating.
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When we perceive any colour, what we're really seeing is a process.
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Whatever it is we're looking at is absorbing some wavelengths of light
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and reflecting others back into our eyes.
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What we see as colour is the process of light
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interacting with everything around us.
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Green is a potent symbol of how life
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first made its momentous step onto land.
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But there's another colour that tells a different story
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about how life has spread across the planet.
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And this time, it's a colour that exists in each one of us.
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These volunteers give us
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a snapshot of the huge variety of human skin tones.
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Skin colour is such an individual thing.
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Each one of us has our own hue.
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But why are we so varied?
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What's the advantage to our species of this beautiful diversity?
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Nina Jablonski is an anthropologist
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who studies the evolution of skin colour in humans.
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This amazing and beautiful range of skin tones
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is caused by one remarkable pigment called melanin,
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which is found in varying amounts in the people that we have here,
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so the more that you have, the darker that you are.
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The brown pigment melanin is crucial to our survival,
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because of one particular property.
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It has the ability to absorb and scatter ultraviolet radiation.
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You can really think of melanin as nature's sunscreen.
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Too much UV from the sun can damage our DNA
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and destroy a vitamin in our blood called folate, that we need.
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So, we rely on melanin to protect us.
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But we humans aren't all a uniform shade.
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And the differences that exist are key to how our species
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has been able to spread across the globe.
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When early humans first evolved in Africa,
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they needed high levels of melanin
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to protect them from the intense sunlight.
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This gave them very dark brown skin.
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But as our ancestors began to migrate,
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they found themselves in very different environments.
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When modern humans first start to leave Africa,
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we see them beginning to move into areas of the world
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that have remarkably less ultraviolet radiation.
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This map shows how UV varies across the globe.
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Throughout Africa, there are these very high levels,
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but the levels taper off dramatically
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as we begin to get into Western Europe or Eastern Asia.
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And in places with less UV,
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high levels of melanin created a problem.
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There are some wavelengths of UV
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that are actually essential to our health,
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that promote the production of vitamin D in our skin.
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We need vitamin D for a strong immune system and healthy bones.
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But with less exposure to the sun,
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our ancestors couldn't make enough of it.
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To survive in these new lands, our colour had to change.
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Nina has produced a map that shows how human skin colour adapted.
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You see very darkly pigmented people
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that are concentrated in the areas of high UV,
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and then, much more lightly or de-pigmented people,
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as you get closer to the poles under conditions of very low UV.
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So, each population works out a balancing act,
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so they're protected enough that their DNA is OK,
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but they still have enough UV to make vitamin D.
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Precisely.
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This interaction between our skin and the sun is so finely balanced
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that even in a single individual, it can adapt and change.
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To show us, Nina is looking for the people with the biggest
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difference in colour between parts of the body
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that get a lot of sun exposure, and parts that get very little.
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So, let's look here.
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Now, we don't see a lot of difference here
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between your upper inner arm and your forehead.
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They're pretty closely similar.
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And with the two very lightly pigmented people,
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there's very, very little difference.
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And similarly, at the very other end of the line,
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with our most darkly pigmented person,
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there's very little difference.
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But in the middle of the line, things are different.
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So, if we look at some of these individuals,
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the difference is really quite great.
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The unexposed skin versus the exposed skin,
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we can really see a visible difference
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and all of these people have sort of moderately to darkly pigmented skin,
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and they have tremendous abilities to tan.
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Tanning is the solution to living at latitudes
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where sunlight changes dramatically throughout the year.
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In these regions, people produce melanin to protect them in summer
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and then lose it in winter.
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All this suggests a problem,
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because today we jet all over the world.
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We live in countries which we weren't born in.
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Does that cause problems?
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Now, we have to modify our lifestyle.
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We have to think about whether we protect our skin
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from ultraviolet radiation,
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or whether we take vitamin D supplements.
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It's only recently we've been able to take measures like this,
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to help control our relationship with the sun.
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For most of our history, this vital role was played by our own skin.
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The colour of each one of us
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tells a story about the success of our own species.
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Being able to change colour has allowed humans to adapt
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and it's allowed us to colonise our planet.
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This rich diversity of colour has come about
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because we've evolved to suit our environment,
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and to appreciate that,
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we don't need to look any further than our own skin.
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Green and brown are colours with vital functions
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that have enabled life to survive
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and spread across the face of the Earth.
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These two colours, the chlorophyll in the green leaves
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and the melanin in my tanned skin,
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are the workhorses of the world of living colour.
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But they're important for what they do, not what they look like,
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and as long as they're playing their role in the machinery of life,
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their appearance doesn't matter at all.
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But the world isn't just green and brown.
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Life has painted the planet in a kaleidoscope of colours -
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bright, vivid, beautiful.
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These colours exist for an entirely different purpose.
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And their story begins
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with the evolution of one crucial part of animal anatomy.
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Aren't these stunning to look at?
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There is a point where the colours of life really blossomed,
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and it was the evolution of the eye.
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It was a massive step forward, because something that can see you
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is something that you can communicate with.
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Now, colour could take on a new role.
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A colour that can be seen can deliver information,
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and to me, there's one colour more steeped in meaning than any other.
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We humans have got loads of words for red -
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vermillion and ruby, scarlet and crimson.
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And it strikes me that all of those words imply something
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that's bright and deep and rich.
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For us, red is the colour of love and the colour of war.
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It can scare us, and it can worry us, and it can move us.
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But red isn't significant only to us humans.
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It holds a special place across the living world.
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To discover why, I've come to meet Andrew Smith,
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a zoologist at Anglia Ruskin University.
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He's working with New World monkeys, like these marmosets.
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Some individuals in the group can distinguish the colour red.
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Others can't.
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Marmosets have got a slightly strange system of colour vision.
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All of the boys are red/green colour-blind,
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along with about a third of the females,
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and the remaining two-thirds of the females
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see the world in a very similar way to ourselves.
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So, within the same troop of monkeys,
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some have colour vision like ours
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and some have red/green colour blindness type vision,
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and you can directly compare the difference? Yes.
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To discover the difference it makes
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if you can distinguish red and green,
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Andrew has set the monkeys a challenge.
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And I'm going to give it a try.
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I've got a pair of glasses which will transform your vision
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from normal colour vision to if you like, colour-blind vision,
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so if you'd like to put them on.
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We put some strawberries in the tree behind you.
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We've got some ripe and some unripe strawberries,
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and I'd like you to find all of the seven ripe strawberries
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as fast as you can. Ready to go? OK. Go.
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The world's gone very green!
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With the goggles on, I see the world as the colour-blind marmosets do.
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There's one.
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The ripe strawberries look very black here, so it's quite hard
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to pick them out against the dark trees and the dark background.
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Under here? Oh, there, right, I was looking too far forward.
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All right, so have I done the job? Seven strawberries.
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Perfect, you found them all and that took you 1 minute, 10 seconds.
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Andrew resets the tree with fresh strawberries
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so that I can try again, but this time, without the goggles.
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OK, go.
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This is much easier. Two, three....
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My natural colour vision is very similar
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to that of the female marmosets that can also see red.
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..six, seven.
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Fantastic. 16 seconds.
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Huge difference!
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So, that's an awful lot faster than the 1 minute 10 that it took you
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when you couldn't tell the difference between red and green.
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Andrew's been carrying out experiments like this on monkeys,
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to see how colour vision effects their ability to find ripe fruit.
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There's one just in the background there, having a bit of a look.
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Ah, here we go, here we go, here we go. Yeah, this one's seen it.
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That one is sitting right on top of a ripe strawberry,
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and not noticing it at all.
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After repeating the test hundreds of times, Andrew found a clear pattern.
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What we found is that all of the monkeys could do the task,
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given enough time, but the monkeys with human-like colour vision
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went straight for the ripe fruits.
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In the wild, being the first to find the food gives you a huge advantage.
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It can be the difference between life and death.
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And what's really fascinating is that it's not just the animals
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that can see red who benefit.
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It's also the plants that can turn red to signal their ripeness,
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attracting animals to disperse their seeds.
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The animals come along, eat the fruit, which is full of seeds,
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and then very conveniently deposit them somewhere else,
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in a pile of their own manure - readymade fertiliser.
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It's a brilliant scheme
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and the only condition is that the fruit mustn't be eaten too soon.
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So, when they're growing, the fruits and the seeds are the same colour
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as everything else around them.
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And then, with one very dramatic colour change,
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the signal is sent that the fruit is ready to go.
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It's a wonderful example of the intimate connection
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between colour and life.
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Colours that exist purely to be seen
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and eyes that have evolved to see them.
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It's what makes colour one of the most powerful forms of communication
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in the living world.
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One that can transcend species...
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..and even signal between plants and animals.
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Messages sent, received
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and understood in colour.
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But for animals with a more highly-developed brain,
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colour can also convey a deeper level of meaning.
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To discover how, I've come to meet anthropologist Dr Jo Setchell.
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She studies mandrills,
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a primate species whose males have a distinctive red nose.
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To us, it's really striking.
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When we look at a mandrill,
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the first thing we see is this bright red nose.
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I want to know what it means to a mandrill to see red.
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Today, we're going to investigate the three males living here,
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in Wingham Wildlife Park.
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Malik,
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Kayin
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and Mathias.
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So, what we're after, ideally, is the nose of the animal.
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The intensity of the red colour
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can vary in different members of the group.
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Jo is investigating why.
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CAMERA CLICKS
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First, we take photographs of the three males.
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There you go. CAMERA CLICKS
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He's staying still now.
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Oh, that's nice, almost got them lined up.
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Now, Jo measures the intensity of the red.
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We want to know the red colour of that particular area.
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We're going to chose exactly the same area on each of the three males.
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So, that gives him a red score of 1.37.
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Jo calculates the red score for all three males.
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We've got Mathias, who's the least colourful,
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and his score was 1.4.
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Then, we have Kayin, and his score was 1.7.
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And then finally, we have Malik. His score was 1.9.
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So, a big difference. Yes.
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At first, Jo thought this was simply an individual trait,
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like our hair colour.
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But after months of monitoring the mandrills' colour,
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she discovered something unexpected.
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So here, we've got another photo of Malik,
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but this was taken two years ago.
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So, that's the same mandrill as the one over there.
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Yes, you can recognise his face,
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but what you can see is, this colour is completely different.
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That's a huge change.
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Yes, it's marvellous, isn't it?
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Jo had discovered that it was possible
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for the mandrills to change colour.
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She continued to monitor them over time,
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and found a striking correlation.
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They change colour basically with a dominance rank,
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so as a male increases in rank, his colour increases,
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and if he loses his rank, then his colour decreases.
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So, the order of the colours reflects the dominance hierarchy?
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That's right, yes. He's the dominant male.
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The shade of red reflects the strict hierarchy in mandrill societies,
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like this one filmed in Gabon.
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At the top is the dominant male.
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He will have access to the females and first pick of the food.
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He broadcasts his enviable position by having the brightest nose.
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So, it reflects success? Yes, basically.
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It's like a badge that you get. Yes.
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It's the hormone testosterone
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that keeps the dominant male's nose bright red.
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Jo's work suggests this colour may have
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an important physiological effect on other Mandrills in the group.
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So, subordinate males have lower testosterone than dominant males,
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and that's an effect of being in the presence of a male
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who has bright red colour.
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Having lower testosterone helps keep these mandrills subordinate,
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so each animal knows its place.
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Here, red is a colour that keeps the peace.
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I'm imagining a huge group of these mandrills in a forest in the wild,
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but connected together with these flashes of red,
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coming through the leaves.
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But each glimpse of red doesn't just reflect a public face,
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their position in the hierarchy,
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it also reflects and affects their internal messengers, the hormones.
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Deep down, physiological changes,
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broadcast in colour.
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In the world of the mandrill,
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your colour is a vital part of who you are.
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But they're not the only animals to communicate
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using colour signals in their skin.
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We humans do it too,
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although we're not aware of it.
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David Perrett is a psychologist at the University of St Andrews.
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He's found that we're constantly broadcasting information,
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using one specific hue.
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To see if I can guess which colour that is
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and what it's saying about me, David has a test.
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You can have a look.
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That's definitely me.
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It's definitely you, but if you adjust the picture
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by sliding backwards and forwards, you may be able to see some change.
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So if I scroll this way,
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I can see that the skin colour's changing a little bit.
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Your task is to make it look healthy.
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The healthiest version of me?
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So, the skin colour's changing a bit and on one side,
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that's definitely ill, down there.
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All right. So, I reckon about...there.
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I can't tell what exactly David is changing in my photograph,
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but he's done the same to photographs of many other people
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with different skin colours.
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If you look here, then you can see manipulation of African faces,
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Asian faces and European faces
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And it's very noticeable here, like you definitely pick up
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the bottom row as being the healthy bunch.
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Well, what did you think we'd changed?
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It looks darker, but I'm not sure how.
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00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:01,000
I mean, there's lots... So, it could be tanned.
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00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,000
Well, we didn't make it darker.
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00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,000
I can't tell, just by looking at them.
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I know this one looks healthy, but I couldn't pick out what's different.
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We made it more yellow.
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A specific type of yellow, or a kind of golden yellow that is...
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It's a unique colour.
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David's research has revealed that across many different cultures,
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people perceive faces with more yellow in them as healthier,
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and more attractive.
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So, why would my skin go yellow?
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Why? Well, it's from what you eat.
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You take in pigments from the fruit and vegetables you eat,
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so we've got here...a pepper.
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Now, that's obviously coloured, but that colours you, when you eat it.
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The pigments get transported in your blood
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and they end up in the skin.
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I mean, there's lots of different colours
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in the fruit and veg we've got.
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We've got carrot, tomatoes...
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But the colours that I'm talking about,
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they're all called carotenoids.
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So, the colour we see in our skin
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is a direct reflection of how much of these pigments we're eating.
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It is, yeah. And how much extra would I have to eat,
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for someone to notice a difference in my face?
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In one study, we simply got people to eat one pepper per day extra,
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and some carrot juice. So, a very modest change in the diet.
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Within a few weeks, the person... Everybody seems to look different.
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So, the level of yellow in our skin is a signal of our state of health.
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One that we're constantly communicating to other people
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without even knowing.
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When you were looking at your own image, you chose an image...
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not with your natural diet,
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with the simulation of a diet with increased fruit and veg consumption,
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maybe three or four more portions, per day.
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So, I picked a skin tone that was a little bit higher
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than my natural skin tone, had more carotenoids in it.
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Yeah.
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And we humans aren't the only species
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to signal our health in this way.
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The vivid pink of flamingos comes entirely from carotenoids
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in the algae and crustaceans they eat.
509
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,000
The more carotenoids, the healthier they'll be, and the brighter.
510
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:35,000
So, their colour is an unmistakable signal of their health
511
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:36,000
to potential mates.
512
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,000
When we think about colour,
513
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,000
we tend to think about aesthetics and its visual appeal.
514
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,000
But there's so much subtlety in the world of colour
515
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,000
that it can also carry lots of information.
516
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:54,000
All sorts of animal species use it to communicate.
517
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:58,000
And so, when you look at a scene like this,
518
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,000
it's not just a beautiful view of natural history,
519
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:05,000
it's also a flood of information.
520
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:13,000
But that information isn't always used to communicate.
521
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:20,000
Sometimes, colour can do the opposite. It can conceal.
522
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:26,000
And there's one particular environment
523
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:28,000
where this can be vital for survival.
524
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:45,000
The ocean can look uniform from above,
525
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:48,000
but it's certainly not like that down below.
526
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:51,000
There's a whole, varied, hidden world out there.
527
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:56,000
It's a dynamic, changing environment.
528
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,000
Survival is a challenge
529
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:04,000
and everything living out there is potential dinner for something else.
530
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,000
To stay alive in this dangerous world,
531
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,000
one type of animal has evolved
532
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:17,000
to manipulate colour in an extraordinary way.
533
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,000
And to see it, I've come to Brighton Sea Life Centre,
534
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:26,000
to meet Marine Biologist Kerry Perkins.
535
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,000
So, what have we got here?
536
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,000
Well, here we actually have some cuttlefish.
537
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,000
So, one, two, three, four.
538
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:40,000
Cuttlefish are a type of cephalopod,
539
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:44,000
a group of marine invertebrates that include squid and octopus.
540
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,000
They're very soft-bodied creatures,
541
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,000
so they're very tasty for a lot of animals,
542
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,000
so you have to think of a strategy, so you don't get eaten all the time.
543
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,000
When most animals want to hide,
544
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:01,000
they seek out an environment that matches their colour.
545
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,000
But the cephalopods have a different tactic.
546
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,000
To show me, Kerry puts one of the cuttlefish in her observation tank.
547
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:17,000
So, settled down now.
548
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:22,000
On the sand, the cuttlefish is a uniform beige colour.
549
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,000
But let's see what happens when Kerry changes the background.
550
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:33,000
Oh, look at that! Completely changed colour.
551
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:36,000
There's big, bright spot on his back,
552
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,000
and another one just behind his eyes.
553
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,000
He fits in with his new environment, doesn't he?
554
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:47,000
Cuttlefish can change the colour of their skin to match the background.
555
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,000
What the cuttlefish is actually doing,
556
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,000
it's trying to break up its pattern,
557
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,000
but obviously, a lot of predators scan for their prey,
558
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,000
so if you're even one or two metres above this cuttlefish,
559
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,000
you would think it was just rocks.
560
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,000
To see just how far it can manipulate its colour,
561
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,000
Kerry's going to test this cuttlefish
562
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,000
with an entirely unnatural background.
563
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:16,000
So, it's black and white checks. Oh, he's gone white.
564
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:20,000
So, he changed straight away,
565
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,000
and even though this chequerboard isn't something that would
566
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,000
ever come up in a real ocean situation, he's had a good go at it.
567
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:27,000
He has. I mean, it wouldn't come across a chequerboard
568
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:29,000
He has. I mean, it wouldn't come across a chequerboard
569
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:33,000
on the seafloor, but obviously, he's still using the same mechanisms
570
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,000
and same ideas behind seeing the squares and giving it a good try.
571
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,000
Even with something as foreign as a chequerboard,
572
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:45,000
the cuttlefish has changed its colour to try and blend in.
573
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:49,000
To achieve this, it manipulates colour in an ingenious way.
574
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:57,000
They've got a layer of skin that's actually reflective
575
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:00,000
and this is a bit like, if you can imagine, a piece of tin foil
576
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,000
that'll reflect any colour that is bounced onto it,
577
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,000
so it has this ability to reflect the colours and its surroundings.
578
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,000
But what's really interesting - on the top layer of it,
579
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,000
they have something called chromatophores.
580
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:16,000
These are chromatophores, seen under a microscope.
581
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:20,000
They're cells containing sacs of different coloured pigments,
582
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,000
and the cuttlefish can control the shape of each one.
583
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,000
Here, each of the cocktail umbrellas
584
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:31,000
represents a different chromatophore.
585
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:38,000
When they're shut, we can't really see what colour the umbrellas are.
586
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,000
It's just silver. It's just sort of silver.
587
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:44,000
So, this is what happens when we see the cuttlefish to be uniform,
588
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:47,000
so they're just reflecting the colour that's in their environment.
589
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,000
But once we start opening them...
590
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:53,000
So, if you give me a hand, we start seeing the colour of the umbrellas.
591
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:01,000
We can create different patterns
592
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:04,000
by changing the combination of umbrellas that are open.
593
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:14,000
This is how the cuttlefish can change their colour
594
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,000
to match their immediate environment.
595
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,000
So, they effectively disappear.
596
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,000
They're the ocean's masters of disguise.
597
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:40,000
The ocean is full of colour and contrast,
598
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:44,000
and the cuttlefish can navigate through that world unseen
599
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:47,000
by revealing its hidden colours at the right time,
600
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:52,000
almost as if it was picking costumes from a portable dressing up box.
601
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:57,000
Other animals use toxins or threats or spikes to deter predators,
602
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,000
but for a cuttlefish, colour is the key to survival.
603
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:15,000
So, colour can disguise and protect life,
604
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:19,000
but in a world crowded with species competing to survive,
605
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:23,000
sometimes you don't need to hide, you need to stand out.
606
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,000
This is a pollia berry and it's my new favourite fruit.
607
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,000
Look at it, it's almost metallic.
608
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,000
Doesn't look like a real fruit at all, but it's flashing light,
609
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,000
and it's a new kind of colour.
610
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:48,000
This is what's known as iridescence -
611
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,000
a rare and spectacular form of colour
612
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:54,000
that only a handful of species on Earth can produce.
613
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,000
And to discover how they do it, we need to take a closer look.
614
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,000
A powerful microscope reveals a hidden landscape
615
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:11,000
with structures perfectly formed to do something remarkable.
616
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:25,000
The secret to all this is to do with shape on tiny, tiny scales.
617
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:30,000
Let's imagine this is the shape that the light is hitting.
618
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,000
So, light waves come in,
619
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:36,000
light waves of all different colours come in and hit this structure.
620
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,000
But they only get reflected back from these bits here.
621
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,000
Anything that goes down there gets lost.
622
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,000
The distance between these ridges
623
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:49,000
is very close to the wavelength of light itself,
624
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,000
and this affects how the waves are bounced back.
625
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,000
So, let's see what happens when light waves are reflected
626
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,000
away from this surface and we'll start with blue light.
627
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,000
If we look at the waves together,
628
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,000
we can see that they both go up at the same time,
629
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:10,000
and then down at the same time, and then up at the same time
630
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:14,000
and then down at the same time, so they're lined up all the way along.
631
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,000
The aligned waves reinforce each other, creating a vivid blue.
632
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,000
But it's not the same for all colours,
633
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,000
so if we have a look at the red light...
634
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,000
Red light has a longer wavelength than blue...
635
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,000
..and these waves are out of alignment.
636
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:40,000
They cancel each other out and so from this angle, there's no red -
637
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:41,000
just very vivid blue.
638
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,000
But from this angle, the blue and the red waves line up,
639
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:50,000
creating purple.
640
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,000
And from here, just the red waves line up.
641
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:00,000
So, as the point of view changes,
642
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:04,000
what the eye perceives are flashes of shimmering colour.
643
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,000
This is iridescence.
644
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:15,000
Until recently, we thought that it only existed
645
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,000
in a select group of species,
646
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:19,000
mainly insects and birds.
647
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:23,000
So, plant scientists in Cambridge were surprised
648
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,000
to find it right under their noses.
649
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:32,000
Beverly Glover is head of the botanical gardens.
650
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:37,000
Well, at the time, we were interested in patterns of pigment on flowers,
651
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,000
and so my post-doc, Heather Witney was looking for flowers
652
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,000
that have different combinations of colour on the petal.
653
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:45,000
She found this one in the garden, here.
654
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,000
She picked it up, brought it back to my office and said,
655
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:50,000
"So, how does it make this blue, yellow, green stuff?"
656
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:53,000
And we had no idea and that's when we realised that nobody had ever
657
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:57,000
noticed iridescence on flowers and it had never been looked at before.
658
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:00,000
Beverly wanted to know why these hibiscus flowers were iridescent,
659
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,000
and to investigate, she needed some help.
660
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:10,000
So, this is the bee colony over here.
661
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:13,000
Bees are one of the hibiscuses' main pollinators.
662
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:18,000
So, Beverly set up an experiment
663
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:22,000
to see whether they responded to the iridescent flowers.
664
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,000
So, we've got a colony of bombus terrestris,
665
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,000
it's a common British bumblebee,
666
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:32,000
and in the wild, they nest in holes in the ground.
667
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,000
You find them in your garden and in the cracks in the soil and so on.
668
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:39,000
The colony is in this cardboard box and they come out through this tube
669
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:43,000
and they come out into this box, which we call the flight arena.
670
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,000
And they're foraging in here for food, mostly nectar
671
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:51,000
to take back through the tube, into the colony, to feed to the larvae.
672
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:55,000
Within her flight arena, Beverly set up an unlikely-looking meadow.
673
00:47:57,000 --> 00:48:01,000
And what we've set up in the box are these artificial flowers.
674
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:02,000
This iridescent disc
675
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:05,000
has sugar solution in the middle to mimic nectar.
676
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,000
To the bee, it's as good as a flower.
677
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:15,000
These then go into the colony, and so, just open the gate,
678
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:17,000
and pop the disc in.
679
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:21,000
So, the flowers are evenly spaced, they're all iridescent.
680
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:26,000
Beverly let a single bee into the flight arena...
681
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:33,000
..and then timed how long it took to fly from one flower to the next.
682
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,000
STOPWATCH BEEPS
683
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:50,000
After testing dozens of bees several times each,
684
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,000
Beverly reset the arena,
685
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:55,000
but this time, with non-iridescent flowers.
686
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:01,000
She wanted to know whether the iridescence made a difference
687
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,000
to the time it took the bees to fly between flowers.
688
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:08,000
What were the results?
689
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:11,000
The iridescent discs are much easier to see.
690
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:12,000
The non-iridescent flowers,
691
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:15,000
you're looking at three to four seconds to find a flower.
692
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:17,000
The iridescent ones, maybe about two seconds to find a flower,
693
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,000
so it really does make a big difference.
694
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:23,000
And that difference really matters, because it's costing the bees energy
695
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:25,000
to be in the air and searching. That's expensive time.
696
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:28,000
Yep, that's exactly right. They're heavy, compared to most insects
697
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:31,000
and so, the fact that this flower is easier to see is good for them,
698
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:33,000
it speeds that up, and that gives me an explanation
699
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:36,000
for why my hibiscus flowers are making this structure.
700
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:39,000
They've figured out that it's a way of attracting the attention -
701
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:42,000
the eye, if you like, of a bee - and that means it's more likely
702
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,000
that they'll get pollinated out there in the wild.
703
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:55,000
There's no doubt that hibiscus is a beautiful, elegant flower,
704
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:59,000
but even more elegant, I think, is the way that iridescence works.
705
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:01,000
It's a solution to a problem.
706
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,000
The flower can't move, but when something else moves past it,
707
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:07,000
it sees strong flashes of colour,
708
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,000
a beacon advertising the flower's presence.
709
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:22,000
Across the Earth,
710
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:26,000
life in all its forms has created a spectacular paintbox.
711
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:34,000
A stunning array of colours,
712
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:37,000
produced by some of the most intricate adaptations in nature.
713
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:45,000
But every one of the colours we've seen so far depends on one thing.
714
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:51,000
Sunlight.
715
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:57,000
Colour is produced by organisms reflecting or manipulating sunlight.
716
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,000
And so, when the sun goes down, colour goes with it.
717
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,000
But there are exceptions.
718
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:18,000
A rare group of animals have evolved a way to produce colour
719
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,000
that doesn't depend on light from the sun.
720
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:51,000
This is the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in Tennessee.
721
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:54,000
It's a pretty bit of forest, but it's not very remarkable.
722
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:56,000
There's nothing unusual here,
723
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,000
but in a couple of hours, that's going to change.
724
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:15,000
As darkness descends, the crowds swarm in.
725
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:22,000
All of these people are hoping to witness a natural spectacle
726
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:26,000
which occurs every year in late May or early June.
727
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,000
It's all so strange, because normally,
728
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:36,000
if you see people lined up along a path,
729
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:38,000
they're facing inwards to see what's on the path,
730
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:43,000
but out here, everyone's facing out into the forest.
731
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:46,000
That's clearly where the spectacle is going to be.
732
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:49,000
It's almost as though this is a theatre,
733
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:51,000
and that's the stage, out there.
734
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:56,000
And it very much feels as though the curtain is about to rise
735
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:59,000
and the first act is about to begin.
736
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:15,000
Once it's completely dark, the show begins.
737
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:36,000
The performers are fireflies.
738
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:39,000
A species called photinus carolinus.
739
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:51,000
This is it. We're right in the middle of it here,
740
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:55,000
and there's these bands of light that are sweeping across the forest.
741
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:01,000
And they're lighting up the forest.
742
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:08,000
This is their mating display,
743
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:11,000
and within it is a hidden code.
744
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:20,000
As they fly, each male flashes six times quickly, and then pauses.
745
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,000
They're trying to catch the attention of the females on the ground.
746
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:33,000
It's rippling through the trees.
747
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:39,000
The precise pattern of flashes signals their species...
748
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:43,000
..a vital way to set themselves apart
749
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:46,000
from the 19 other species of firefly that live here.
750
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,000
And the really amazing thing about this
751
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:53,000
is that one single species, all by itself,
752
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:57,000
can see all the other ones of its species
753
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,000
in this section of the forest.
754
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:04,000
This is communication in colour.
755
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:16,000
These tiny creatures have evolved
756
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:19,000
so that a part of their body has become a lantern.
757
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:31,000
Inside it, they produce a chemical called luciferin,
758
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:33,000
that reacts with oxygen
759
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:37,000
to produce these striking flashes of colour that light up the forest.
760
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:53,000
For a small insect in a big world,
761
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:55,000
this is a fantastic strategy.
762
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:59,000
The fireflies bide their time, waiting until
763
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:03,000
the bustling multi-coloured riot of the daylight world has gone
764
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:07,000
and the forest is black, colourless.
765
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:12,000
And then, each tiny insect switches on its own portable colour factory,
766
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:15,000
sending a beacon to the rest of its species
767
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:19,000
and co-ordinating the start of the next generation.
768
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:22,000
Life harnesses light in all kinds of ways,
769
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,000
but I think it's really lovely
770
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:27,000
that this trick of creating colour where there was none before
771
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,000
has come from one of the smallest species of all.
772
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:47,000
Colour has been fundamental to the evolution of the diverse
773
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,000
and beautiful living world that exists today.
774
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:57,000
And in turn, life has painted the Earth in magnificent Technicolor...
775
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:01,000
..expanding the palette of the planet
776
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:05,000
by manipulating colour and even creating its own.
777
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:10,000
But all of these colours
778
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:14,000
are still only just the visible part of the spectrum -
779
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:17,000
a tiny proportion of all the colours that exist.
780
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:24,000
And it's the colours we can't see that are set to shape our future.
781
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,000
Next time, I'll be looking beyond the rainbow.
782
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:36,000
Isn't it fascinating, this view of the world?
783
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:38,000
I'll discover the hidden colours
784
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:41,000
that can reveal the deepest secrets of the universe.
785
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:44,000
This is a picture of the Orion nebula.
786
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,000
If you look at it in infrared, it completely lights up.
787
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:49,000
We're observing the invisible.
788
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:52,000
Discover more about the story of the colours of life
789
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,000
with the Open University.
790
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:55,000
Go to...
791
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:00,000
..and follow the links to the Open University.
67623
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