Mystery pic

[Fat Tone]

hairs on something like a bee?

[Brian Ellis]

insect or arachnid or crustacean ?

Insect but not a bee or other hymenoptera

[Evildead666]

edit : didn't see 2nd page....

[degrub]

diptera ?

[Brian Ellis]

...ptera but not diptera

[Dr Mordrid]

Dragonfly

[degrub]

Homoptera ? or Trichoptera

[Brian Ellis]

OK, I'll put you out of your misery. It is lepidoptera. I saw this butterfly, a The Hermit, Chazara briseis, trapped dead in the trim of my car, had slight iridescence on the dark brown parts of the wing, so I put it under the microscope to see what was going on. I saw that some of the scales were chromatically refracting the light, hence the coloured areas.

[Marshmallowman]

sounds right, I have heard no animal produces a blue pigment, its all done optically

[VJ]

I believe some octopusses have blue pigment...

[Brian Ellis]

I believe some octopusses have blue pigment...

Depends on the number of litres of lager you have consumed, along with pink elephants!!!

[VJ]

Really?
I thought I read somewhere that the blue ringed octopus has blue pigment...

http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/Kopffuesser/blauring.html

and as do some poisoness frogs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_dart_frog

But now I'm not sure anymore...

Jörg

[Brian Ellis]

I was only kidding!

[Marshmallowman]

Heh... I will have to revise my biology. At some point in the past I recall some documentary or so saying all blue is an optical effect.(in animals)

But considering I have several close encounteres with blue ring octpii (they are tiny) and that they have blue blood(so do horsehoe crabs?) I should have known better... maybe it was vertibrates ...

[Marshmallowman]

Krap..bue frogs