Skeletons in Pink

Here is a short article about the art of ‘diaphonization’, with some stunning pictures of pink skeletons of small critters.

Why Are These Animals Pink? A Process Called Diaphonization

It explains that this is an old technique to preserve the bones of specimens by using chemical techniques to make the flesh transparent and attach dye molecules to the bones. It is interesting how by turning a skeleton pink, it then looks rather less creepy, and allows you to study the anatomy of the subject without feeling such a shiver down your spine. Or maybe that’s just me.

Curious how pony bones are always depicted in bone white, even though we see ponies in a full rainbow of colours. Of course it is not hard to headcanon a reason for that, but I think it would be equally valid to imagine a universe in which their bones come in a dazzling range of pinks, blues and luminous yellows, just like the living ponies. Something for fanfiction writers of tales of the equine undead to consider.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

I ascribe the pony palette to chromelanin, a pigment protein that's only stable in the presence of magic. (Same principle as the eyes and hair of anime characters.) Bones don't usually have to defend themselves from UV radiation.

That said, Pinkie would definitely be interested in pink skeletons. Is Diaponyzation too obvious a story title?

[Pineta]

5109918
Sounds like a good theory to develop further to explain hopeless magic and cutie marks and probably a lot more. Yes as bones are only visible when it's game over for the individual, it's hard to see any significant survival or reproductive advantage to changing their colour.

Now thinking about a possible opening plot for a thriller where a post mortem examination reveals something very interesting inside the murder victim...

[Hap]

huh

This reminds me, though. I want to make a chameleon farm, and use directed evolution to reverse-engineer a triceratops.