This is a sea mouse. Despite the name, it's not a mouse at all. It's actually a worm, covered in fur.

He looks a bit dull, doesn't he? But if he's taken out of his tank and placed on Kate's hand, you can see that his hairs change colour beautifully.

Here's a close-up. Sea mice can be found all around the British coast, but this chap and his mates are from Lyme Regis Aquarium. So where do those beautiful colours come from?

Well, the sea mouse's hair is really good at reflecting light. You might think that light is white, but no - it's actually made up of lots of different colours.

This can be seen with this simple experiment. When a beam of light is pointed at a prism, through a slot of card, you can see that the prism splits the colour up into all the different colours of the rainbow.

So light is made up of lots of different colours, but only when it's split up. That's exactly what the sea mouse's hair does. It separates it into all the different colours of the rainbow.

It's because of this that the sea mouse can also help to build computers! It's amazing - but true! Currently, computers process information using electrical systems called bits and bytes. But scientists are looking into creating a computer that processes information using light waves.

Light is able to travel at almost 200,000 miles per second (!). And because it travels so fast, these new computers would be thousands of times faster than the ones we use today.

But there's one problem. Light needs to travel down cables, just like these fibreoptic lights. And scientists can't yet make cables are that are good enough.

Which is where the sea mouse comes in. They're so good at using light that scientists are trying to copy them, to make cables good enough to use in new computers.

So with all our knowledge and technology - we still can't use light as well as the humble sea mouse. Outdone by a furry worm!

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