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. 2018 Apr 18;8:6174. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-24579-6

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© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Effects of αMSH on crocodylian color change. (A) The top panels represent histological sections of skin from crocodiles maintained in dark tanks, while the bottom panels are skin samples from the same animals acclimated to white tanks for three hours. (B) Crocodiles acclimated to total darkness were injected with 10 μg/kg body αMSH. The animals were kept in darkness and skin color was measured for five hours. (C) Crocodiles maintained in black environments were moved to white tanks. A rapid rise in skin lightening was accompanied by a sharp increase in corticosteroid levels. When the crocodiles were placed back into a dark environment, skins color darkened while corticosteroid levels remained elevated. *Statistically different from measurements of skin color of the same animals in dark tanks.