Today's topic was "Life in Colour" which was based off a documentary voiced by David Attenborough. Here our hosts, Keira and Darshinie, covered about a range of different animals and their unique features/adaptations. Some of the features/adaptations we went through are how insects can see the UV spectrum on flowers rather than the usual burst of bright colours humans see and how Mandrills use colour as a form of intimidation. How do these colours appear? The two main reasons were due to testosterone and their unique arrangement of skin fibres. Birds have iridescent feathers that change depending on how the light reflects on it; which are used in courtship performances to win over the female bird's heart. We also talked about the Cuban painted snails, which have a unique combination of colour and stripe on their shells which are earned from their diet. It's used as a defense mechanism as it dazzles enemies due to how unorthodox it is. Did you know the stripes on zebras have more use to them than just making zebras look outstanding? These stripes actually confuse predators and flies (which could carry deadly diseases), the stripes make it difficult to judge distance as it messes with the animal's sense of perception. Animals also use bright yellow, red or blue markings to warn others whether they're poisonous, but some adopt similar markings to scare away predators albeit not being poisonous themselves. Some animals use camouflage to hide. Mantises can appear as flowers, moths as a piece of tree bark and caterpillars that look like snakes - all are used to confuse predators or prey. Before closing the session, the question "Why can't human change colours?" came up, we discussed that technically humans can somewhat change colour through getting a tan out in the sun or when a person blushes; though we don't do it voluntarily and only ectotherms - animals that have specialised cells that allow them to change colours which contain pigments called chromatophores where they are largely responsible for generating skin and eye colour - have the ability to change colour voluntarily.