Glad you asked!  In the terrestrial animal kingdom, what you are seeing is one of nature’s most amazing magic tricks that fools the eye into seeing the color blue. Yes, you are technically seeing blue, but the actual color is not a blue pigment but the subtraction of colors to show you only the blue in the color spectrum.  Huh?  With one known exception, nature’s creatures do not produce blue pigment, so they resort to other methods, or deception, to get you to see the wonderful color that is blue.

It is pretty amazing that only a very few known animal species in the entire animal kingdom produce a true blue pigment. One is the “Obrina Olivewing” butterfly.  How can that be, you might ask, since we see blue flowers, birds, amphibians, and other animals?  Well, animals that have blue colorations achieve this by a process called “Structural Color” which changes the wavelength of light.  When light hits special structures on a cell, wing, or other parts of an organism, they cause the wavelengths to bounce a certain way which enables you to see the color that is intended to be seen.

For example, the Blue Morpho butterfly is not actually blue but gets its color from the fact that its wing scales are shaped in a certain way that the only wavelength of light it reflects is blue.  If the scales were shaped differently, it would not be blue that is seen.  Blue Jays are yet another example of this incredible display.  They get their color through their own unique process, too.  Each feather consists of light-scattering, microscopic beads spaced to cancel out everything but the blue wavelength.  Absolutely amazing!

Luckily for me, I have blue pigments in my paintbox.  I wanted to use all the blue paints I had in my possession (nine in all), especially since I do not rely on any light refraction tomfoolery to get my blues to be seen!  There are so many more wonderful, unique stories of how the color blue is seen in nature and each one is a truly fascinating read!  I just wanted to share a few examples of this incredible phenomenon.

“Chemiluminescence Of A Blue Whale”