The reason tigers are orange is actually because animals are colorblind so their camouflage works in both the jungle and the savanna.

The reason tigers are orange is actually because animals are colorblind so their camouflage works in both the jungle and the savanna. What are other things about animals you were always confused about?

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  1. 6 months ago
    Anonymous
  2. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    Why not just be green then?

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Then the camouflage wouldn't work in the savanna

  3. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    Many mammals don't because they evolved underground and had no need for color vision; primates reevolved it much later.
    Many reptiles including birds have full color vision due to spending most of their evolutionary history being active during the daytime aboveground. One of the big exceptions is snakes, which, you guessed it, evolved from fossorial ancestors.

  4. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    why didn't they just evolve to become green instead? then they wouldn't need to mainly hunt colorblind animals

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Being orange lets them be camouflaged in the savanna for trichromat animals as well

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >tiger
        >savanna

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Evolution is about using whatever works, green pigmentation, for whatever reason, hard to produce on mammalian hair, and tigers mostly hunt mammalian prey, who are usually color blind (barring primates).
      Therefore, tigers wouldn't gain a whole lot from evolving the apparently difficult to produce green pigmentation, why worry about being able to catch tiny birds or some stupid shrieking ape when there are plenty of ungulates with shitty eyesight?

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Why haven’t the deer evolved better eyesight?

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          They frick fast enough that they havent had to.
          If orange predators in the forest start killing them fast enough the trichromatic mutants will be the only ones to survive.
          Basically they havent had enough pressure to evolve in that direction.
          Nature doesnt optimize for the best it just aims for "good enough to make a couple babies before dying"

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Why haven’t the deer evolved better eyesight?
          A better question is, why haven't they evolved to cross highways and roads better? Been through plenty of generations by now. When will they learn?

          • 6 months ago
            Anonymous

            Evolution works slowly and isn't great at handling abrupt changes in environment very quickly.

            • 6 months ago
              Anonymous

              In observing cats my whole life I have noticed that some run or walk into the street without concern for anything and others I have observed actually stop and look both ways just like a person.

              • 6 months ago
                Anonymous

                Oh this is a fun thing that i've noticed here with rabbits.
                Basically some areas of my city have the normal wild rabbits, and some have feral rabbits released and are breeding, they're brown and black respectively.
                The wild brown rabbits you find hit quite often, even in areas with less traffic.
                But the feral black rabbits you NEVER see hit even in high traffic areas.
                My pet theory is that because the ferals come from domestic stock and still have those domestic genes in them they're less skittish around humans and thus less likely to run in a random direction to escape from "predators" in the form of people.

              • 6 months ago
                Anonymous

                So what you are saying is evolution hasn't really passed the issue and cats have mixed results with roads? Are you agreeing with me?

  5. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    >because animals are colorblind
    Most mammals other than primates are. Birds have even better color vision than we do.

  6. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    This sounds like a bunch of unverifiable bs that someone made up and turns out to not be true at all, like "gravity was less strong in the mesozoic and thats why dinosaurs got so big DURRR"

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Well, we can actually check how many and what type of color receptors an animal has in it's eye.

  7. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    I learned about that from a field and stream magazine a long time ago. pic related is what deer see.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      I read about tigers but never made the connection to the wests that hunters wear.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        The vests are also worn so you don't get shot by some idiot
        as often

  8. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    There are no “blue” birds. Red feathers are caused by pigmentation. Blue feathers are a structural color.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Why have people come to the conclusion that structural colour is somehow not real colour? If an object projects a colour its that colour, somple as.
      Blue pigment absorbs other wavelengths and emits blue.
      Structural blue colour absorbs other wavelengths and emits blue, it just does it with a larger pattern.
      If you look close enough at a piece of blue pigment its not going to be blue anymore either.
      Im sick of this "thing x isnt really an x" trend in popsci, and it usually coincides with a non-scientific definition that was later applied to a scientific category.
      Like i saw a video where a dude went "Wowowow! Did you know there actually isnt such thing as a tree because trees evolved many times from different origins!" when "tree" is the description of a niche of "tall plants with a central woody body" it was never a claim of "all these things are of the exact same origin". Wow thanks for poisoning online discourse by giving fuel to pedantic fricks.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >reeeeee stop proving me wrong i hate thinking
        Cope, homosexual. Sorry nature is interesting and complex and you're too much of a midwit mongoloid to understand its nuances.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        this tbh

        >reeeeee stop proving me wrong i hate thinking
        Cope, homosexual. Sorry nature is interesting and complex and you're too much of a midwit mongoloid to understand its nuances.

        arguing semantics doesnt make you smart

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >it usually coincides with a non-scientific definition that was later applied to a scientific category.
        massive fact on this part. that is so annoying when that is done, it's like people think modern science has a monopoly on what words mean

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >it usually coincides with a non-scientific definition that was later applied to a scientific category.
        massive fact on this part. that is so annoying when that is done, it's like people think modern science has a monopoly on what words mean

        a few months ago I was talking to a German guy who started seething like mad because he found out that strawberries aren't botanically berries and went on an autistic rant about how "English makes no sense" because we don't change the names of incredibly common foods because they're scientifically inaccurate

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          Meanwhile, Germans:

          • 6 months ago
            Anonymous

            Peak naming.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Anger

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >"Wowowow! Did you know there actually isnt such thing as a tree because trees evolved many times from different origins!"
        This is kinda true though since there's no taxonomic difference between a tree and a bush

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          The whole point is that you can have different kinds of descriptions/classifications, that are useful in different contexts. Yes, tree/brush is not a useful distinction if you are writing a detailed biology paper about their evolutionary history, but are very useful terms if you were say writing a manual on how to build an emergency survival shelter. The same is true with the whole pigments/structure color thing; the distinction is useful if you are writing a detailed anatomical paper, but not helpful if you were making say a field identification guide to birds.

  9. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    All mammalian pigmentation follows the same genetic pathways and processes. During development, color fills in from the spine and wraps around. That’s why Sylvester cats wear a tuxedo and the palms of hands and soles of feet of Black folk are whiter than the rest of their body. Interestingly, this also means humans could sex select for tiger stripes.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      What would a smashed an slammed human look like

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous
      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        >would
        you got an entire continent filled with shartgolems
        take a pick

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      /misc/ has rotted your mind

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        I see nothing wrong with that statement.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      >color fills in from the spine and wraps around
      Isn't this backward? Tuxedo happens because the pattern starts solid and "breaks" into sections and islands filled with white. It doesn't start white and fill in the black.
      http://messybeast.com/bicolours.htm

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Your picture is showing the opposite of what you're saying.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          Oh nevermind im moronic and misread.
          Ignore me.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Your picture is showing the opposite of what you're saying.

        Maybe I'm illiterate but the bottom 2 are "disproven" while the theory anon with the picture proposed is labeled "proven" also there are cats with skunk stripes like in picrel which seem to go against the idea that pigmentation encroaches from the spine toward the belly.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          I forgot picrel, because I'm accident prone.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          Hence why i said i'm moronic and misread.

          • 6 months ago
            Anonymous

            Ic, I thought you were the picture poster saying that for some reason.

  10. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    That's a fricking goat.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      It's a lion

  11. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    Birds can see in more colors then humans though

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      tigers can't hunt birds

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Why did they adapt to climb trees then?

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          for fun.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        Camouflage isn't just to hide while hunting. It's also to hide while being hunted.

  12. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    how did the tiger know that

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      he looked it up on google

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        You, sir, have won the Internet for TOday!

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