Platypuses GLOW blue-green under UV light — and we just found out 🦫✨

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Platypuses glow blue green under UV light. Their  fluffy brown fur lights up like a neon sign in the dark. By day, they look totally ordinary. Small,  brown, duck build, beavertailed mammals waddling along Australian river banks like wet teddy bears.  But in 2020, scientists at Chicago's Field Museum aimed a UV flashlight at a platypus pelt and froze  in shock. The fur lit up cyan and lime green, glowing eerily like something pulled  from a deep sea creature or alien planet.

[00:00:37]Their fur soaks up invisible UV rays [music]  and spits the energy back out as visible light, a trick called [music] biofllororesence. Only  flying squirrels and possums glow like this, meaning the platypus completes a glowing  trio across all three mammal branches.

[00:00:55]Scientists think the glow may help platypuses  see each other in murky moonlit water or hide from UV sensitive predators above. Would  you let UV light reveal your [music] secret glow?

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