Hi there viewers, Julian here for DNews. Translucent animals are more common than you probably

think, in that they actually already exist.

Most of the naturally occurring ones are found in the deep ocean. There’s so little light

that reflecting any that does reach that far down can make them a tasty piece of deep sea

horror sushi. So a lot of deep sea critters are see-through to avoid that. You might notice

a lot of them are red or a transparent pink too, because red light’s long wavelength

means it has low energy and doesn’t penetrate water well. Thus animals that only reflect

red light are essentially invisible down there. Isn’t science neat?

Up here there’s not much point in having transparent skin. There’s so much light

that being a gooey see-through blob of floating bones and organs is going to be a bit more

noticeable than being the same color as your surrounds, so it doesn’t really make sense.

Of course scientists aren’t hampered by your precious “logic” and have bred a

few frogs and goldfish to have see through skin. Researchers in Japan took the most pale

ones they could find and kept breeding them together.

The goal is to be able to observe the internal organs while the animal is alive, making it

easier to keep track of tumor growth and how they react to chemicals. This for me raises

an important philosophical question. No it’s not, “should scientists play god?” I want

to know what you call a see through goldfish.

But now there’s a way to turn the skin, brain, lungs, the whole shebang except the

bones clear. A team at the RIKEN quantitative biology center in Osaka pulled off the trick

on mice by flushing out their circulatory systems with saline and then pumping a chemical

through them for 2 weeks.

The chemical removes heme from the mice. Heme is found in most tissue and is the “heme”

part of hemoglobin, it’s the compound in blood that binds to oxygen and also gives

it its red tint. Fun fact: your blood is always red, regardless of whether or not it has oxygen.

Remember what I said about red light not being able to penetrate well because of it’s low

energy? That’s why your veins look blue under your skin.

Totally transparent mice make it possible to see the cellular networks inside tissue.

Hiroki Ueda, who led the team, hopes it can be used to gain a better understanding of

cancer or autoimmune diseases by being able to observe how they develop without having

to dissect the mice.

As it so often goes though, the mice don’t get off easy. Being stripped of blood and

then heme entirely is pretty much game over. But I for one am resting easier knowing that

there’s no nightmare fuel jell-o mice running around with the chance to escape and breed

and form an invisible army of horror and cheese theft.

If you want to learn another way to turn yourself invisible while keeping all your blood in

you, Amy’s got a video on that over here.

If you’ve got a story of a time science did something awesome for lab mice, I want

to hear about it in the comments. I’m not a vegetarian or anything, but I can only read

so many stories about lab mice before I need a pick me up. Until then, I’ll see you next

time on DNews.