Shiniest living objects

The shiniest living objects in the world are the fruit of the marble berry Pollia condensata – a 1-m-tall herb native to Ghana. Resembling the man-made iridescent baubles used for decorating Christmas trees, these vivid metallic-blue fruits have been shown in scientific studies to provide a total (unpolarised) light reflectivity of approximately 30% compared with a silver mirror. This is the highest reported light reflectivity of any biological material, including bird feathers, beetle exoskeletons and even the famously intense blue reflected by the scales on the wings of Morpho butterflies.