Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.13011

    Fish scales

    Date
    1969
    Creator
    Eric James Denton (1923 - 2007, British) , Marine biologist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (drawing): 278mm
    width (drawing): 213mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > fish
    Description
    Studies of the surface of six fish scales under magnification. The scales (possibly from a salmon) were part of an investigation into the reflective nature of fish skin. Scales numbered 10-15.

    From a notebook kept by Eric Denton at the Marine Biological Associations’ Laboratory at Citadel Hill, Plymouth. Inscribed above right: ‘Fish 1 13/1/69’.

    An account of these researches on the silver colouring of fish is given in ‘Sir Eric James Denton…’, by Malcolm R. Clarke, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, v.55 (2009) pp.59-76.‘They then found that differences in reflection from different parts of a fish were the result of different orientations of the reflecting crystals in the skin, and this greatly enhanced their camouflage when viewed from any direction. They showed the mechanism of reflection to be related to the orientation of guanine crystals on the scales, and contrasted the structure in a variety of silvery teleosts…’

    Sir Eric James Denton FRS (1923-2007) British marine biologist and physiologist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1964.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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