Blue skinned humanoids

[PlutonianEmpire]

What is required for a human-like alien to evolve naturally light blue skin?

[ajtribick]

Not reflecting enough red or green light?

[selden]

woad?


Bird plumage can be quite colorful, so I would expect that equivalent properties could produce colorful skin surfaces, too. See http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/205/14/2017

[ElChristou]

a complete blue tattoo

[buggs_moran]

low iron?

seriously though, perhaps a diet with colloidal silver in it or

excess levels of methemoglobin
in the blood. Methemoglobin which is blue, is a nonfunctional form of the red
hemoglobin that carries oxygen. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen
in the blue veins just below the skin.

[Reiko]

You have to be born on Andoria

[LordFerret]

Taking a swim in an ice-cold lake in early spring usually does the trick for me.

[Hungry4info]

You have to be born on Andoria

Haha, right when I saw the topic of this thread, I just knew that was coming from you, Reiko, haha

[Reiko]

Haha, right when I saw the topic of this thread, I just knew that was coming from you, Reiko, haha

hehe I wish I had antennae like them :p

[buggs_moran]

HEH...

[starfleetengineer]

Apparently the answer is: L'Oreal Casting Creme Gloss in chocolate brown

(Girl 'looks like an alien' after using hair dye)

[zhar2]

i dunno how i missed this thread, but id like to show you an andorian i gimped.

original image at 2900x4350 pixels and not censored




Oh by the way andorians are my fav star trek race, and also im working on a female andorian (they are supposed to have 6 breasts according to some sources)

[eburacum45]

Here's a close relative of humanity that has patches of bright blue skin so I suspect that a wholly blue humanoid is not impossible

[LordFerret]

Good point eburacum45. I would venture to guess then that somewhere in some cellular biology text there's a definition of the Mandrill's blue-skin composition. Adapt that to humans?!? A preference for bananas a side-effect?

buggs_moran has a point...
Dietary Supplement Can Turn The Skin Permanently Blue, Reports The Harvard Health Letter

Why blue?...
From: The Journal of Experimental Biology

Structural colouration of mammalian skin: convergent evolution of coherently scattering dermal collagen arrays

Richard O. Prum 1,* and Rodolfo H. Torres 2

1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, PO Box 208105, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
2 Department of Mathematics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA

For more than a century, the blue structural colours of mammalian skin have been hypothesized to be produced by incoherent, Rayleigh or Tyndall scattering. We investigated the colour, anatomy, nanostructure and biophysics of structurally coloured skin from two species of primates – mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) and vervet monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) – and two species of marsupials – mouse opossum (Marmosa mexicana) and wooly opossum (Caluromys derbianus). We used two-dimensional (2-D) Fourier analysis of transmission electron micrographs (TEMs) of the collagen arrays in the primate tissues to test whether these structural colours are produced by incoherent or coherent scattering (i.e. constructive interference). The structural colours in Mandrillus rump and facial skin and Cercopithecus scrotum are produced by coherent scattering by quasi-ordered arrays of parallel dermal collagen fibres. The 2-D Fourier power spectra of the collagen arrays from Mandrillus and Cercopithecus reveal ring-shaped distributions of Fourier power at intermediate spatial frequencies, demonstrating a substantial nanostructure of the appropriate spatial frequency to produce the observed blue hues by coherent scattering alone. The Fourier power spectra and the observed reflectance spectra falsify assumptions and predictions of the incoherent, Rayleigh scattering hypothesis. Samples of blue Marmosa and Caluromys scrotum conform generally to the anatomy seen in Mandrillus and Cercopithecus but were not sufficiently well preserved to conduct numerical analyses. Colour-producing collagen arrays in mammals have evolved multiple times independently within the two clades of mammals known to have trichromatic colour vision. Mammalian colour-producing collagen arrays are anatomically and mechanistically identical to structures that have evolved convergently in the dermis of many lineages of birds, the tapetum of some mammals and the cornea of some fishes. These collagen arrays constitute quasi-ordered 2-D photonic crystals.

Interesting stuff.

[zhar2]

great stuff.

[selden]

A post obviously intended to be a "troll" has been deleted and the userid banned.

[Fenerit]

Excuse moi the intrusion in these matters, but as light blue skin mean cyan skin, you must assume alot of cyanide; also a bit of bismuth and arsenic poisoning should be enough.

[Fenerit]

Ahem, I forgot the Cobalt (Co) which radioactive isotope 60Co emit gamma rays that are of blue wavelenghts, although they are associated with the green after the rise of the Incredible Hulk; here there was a misinterpretation due to phosphores of oscilloscope which measured the radiation. The exposition of Incredible Hulk to the gamma rays is show by its pants, purple-violet alike.