Peacock feathers are greatly admired for their bright iridescent colors, but it turns out they can also emit laser light when dyed multiple times, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. As previously reported, the bright iridescent colors in things like peacock feathers and butterfly wings don't come from any pigment molecules but from how they are structured. In the case of peacock feathers, it's the regular, periodic nanostructures of the barbules—fiber-like components composed of ordered melanin rods coated in keratin—that produce the iridescent colors. The authors of this most recent study were interested in whether they could produce similar laser emissions using peacock feathers and hopefully identify the specific mechanism. The team observed laser emissions in two distinct wavelengths for all color regions of the feathers' eyespots, with the green color regions emitting the most intense laser light.