Mondo Knows Facts
Comb jellies produce rainbow flashes without bioluminescence
Beating rows of cilia scatter light to create shimmering rainbow effects.
Ctenophores, or comb jellies, swim using eight longitudinal rows of fused cilia called comb plates. As these thousands of hair-like cilia beat in synchronized waves, they refract and diffract surrounding light like microscopic prisms, creating brilliant rainbow displays.
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Tags: comb-jelly, ocean, light
Comb jellies produce rainbow flashes without bioluminescence: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Beating rows of cilia scatter light to create shimmering rainbow effects. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Ocean, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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