Well, 2020 has brought us many things and, now, it brought us glowing wombats. No, they don’t have radioactive poisoning or the like — they literally just glow in the dark.
How do we know this? Well, a bunch of scientists accidentally made the discovery.
British publication Daily Mail reports that the marsupials have bioluminescent fur so, if you shine a black light on them — boom — they’re ready for a rave party. This also goes for your friendly neighborhood platypus because they, too, have glow in the dark fur.
Kenny Travouillon, Curator of Mammalogy at Western Australian Museum, tweeted earlier this month that the discovery of the glowing platypuses resulted in the scientists acting like teenagers with glow sticks.
“After platypus was shown to glow under UV light, couldn’t resist trying bilbies… their ears and tails shine bright like a diamond!,” he said.
While now we, humans, know about these glowing animals — scientists are now trying to figure out what these glowing animals see and if they view the world in a different light.