Timeline for How would tattoos fare on reptilian scales?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2, 2014 at 15:34 | comment | added | Linkyu | I initially had large scales in mind, but both options are interesting to me indeed. | |
| Dec 2, 2014 at 13:48 | comment | added | Rory Alsop | Ah - I understand. Yes, I guess that's two possible scenarios then: large scales, or fine scales. Both interesting. | |
| Dec 2, 2014 at 11:39 | comment | added | Peteris | Possibly the misunderstanding is about the size of scales that a hypothetical humanoid reptilian would have, I was thinking about fantasy artwork with 'dragonscale' where the scales are relatively large and need "tattoos" within a scale; but a crocodile-like skin is probably more realistic and then 'scale shaped pixels' can form a large drawing on chest or something like that. | |
| Dec 2, 2014 at 11:36 | comment | added | Peteris | Yes, you can selectively alter the cells (not that it's that easy to do) in 'source' layer of skin (stratum germinativum?) underneath the old scale that grows the new skin cells, and those changes will appear in each new scale in future. Having a whole scale in a single color or the natural "self-organizing" patterns will work, but I was worried about the feasibility of artificial patterns within a scale - if you have altered a subset of cells that make up a picture on that layer, how much does it line up with the locations of the altered cells in the freshly grown scale. | |
| Dec 2, 2014 at 9:19 | comment | added | Rory Alsop | Peteris - you made this comment twice, on my post and on Martijn's, but it isn't based on fact. When a scale is shed, many animals grow the new scale in the same colour, from the same cell. You don't modify the organism genetically (to grow the pattern in utero/from birth) but do it more like a tattoo - local changes to cells when the organism is fully grown. | |
| Dec 2, 2014 at 1:58 | comment | added | Peteris | I really doubt that the scale cells reproduce in any manner that conserves locality, much less a 1-to-1 (or an orderly 1-to-100) mapping between the source cells and the cells of the new scale - the generic process is that a small pile of source cells multiply into a larger homogenous pile of target cells that then diversifies forming the intended tissue. If you can engineer genes that allow a bunch homogenous cells to grow into a tissue with the design you want, then that works; if not, then not. | |
| Dec 1, 2014 at 11:40 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 1, 2014 at 13:33 | |||||
| Dec 1, 2014 at 11:36 | history | answered | Rory Alsop | CC BY-SA 3.0 |