Underwater Armor
Zooming in on everyday structures gives us a unique perspective. This is an image of the overlapping scales on a zebrafish.
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DownloadUnderwater Armor
Zooming in on everyday structures gives us a unique perspective. This is an image of the overlapping scales on a zebrafish.
What am I looking at?
This is a fluorescent image of a section of zebrafish scales. The tissue that composes the scales is blue, green, and magenta.
Biology in the background
Most fish are covered with scales that are part of their skin. Scales protect fish from physical and microbial damage; in addition, they reduce drag to make the fish faster and nimbler in the water.
A zebrafish scale is about 1 millimeter across, or roughly 13 times larger than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was created using confocal microscopy.
Daniel Castranova and Brant Weinstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development