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Martin Whiting
@lizardlab.bsky.social

Check out this amazing cartoon by Meghan Swan (IG: @deadpixelproductions) explaining tongue colour in the Australian blue tongue skink (blueys). It was such a pleasure collaborating on this project, which was part of a course at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Martin Whiting
@lizardlab.bsky.social

Part 2 This work was edited and supported by @hudrewthis.bsky.social, an academic in MassArt's new Integrative Sciences and Biological Arts Department. Blueys are iconic in Australia. They are a particularly large skink, found in both the wild and suburbia, where they face lots of threats.

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Martin Whiting
@lizardlab.bsky.social

They are perhaps best know for their bright blue tongues but read the cartoon — the blue colour we see is not all it appears to be. The Lizard Lab tackled the question of why the tongue is so brightly coloured, and how that colour is produced.

Martin Whiting
@lizardlab.bsky.social

To answer that question we are delving into collaborative projects with nanoparticle engineers and experts in robotics. This phase of the study is being led by Dr. Sergio Naretto. Stay tuned for more exciting results!

Martin Whiting
@lizardlab.bsky.social

To read our first paper about bluey tongue colour, go here: link.springer.com/article/10.1... or message us for a PDF. #lizard #bluetongue #bluetongueskink #bluetonguelizard #lizardcartoon #cartoon #tiliqua #coloursci

link.springer.comWhy blue tongue? A potential UV-based deimatic display in a lizard - Behavioral Ecology and SociobiologyAbstract Deimatic displays are a type of anti-predator behaviour that startles the predator. They have received much recent theoretical attention, enabling the empirical study of this phenomenon withi...