The West African Gaboon viper, one of the largest in Africa and a master of camouflage, has dark spots in the geometrical pattern of its skin that are deep, velvety black and reflect very little light.

Interwoven with white- and brown-coloured scales that are very reflective, this creates a high contrast that renders the snake difficult to spot on the richly-patterned rainforest floor.

A team of German scientists set out to find the secret behind the black spots' ultra darkness, and found the scale surface was made up of tightly-packed, leaf-like microstructures covered in turn with nanometre-sized ridges.
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One nanometre is equivalent to a billionth of a metre.

Writing in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, the team theorised that the microstructures and nanostructures, which protrude at slightly different angles, scatter and trap incoming light.

"The structure based velvet black effect could also be potentially transferred to other materials," the scientists wrote.