So was it just random that their fur is orange and not green? As both would help hunt prey just as well. Or is the advantage of being orange, that it wards away other tigers and predators that might otherwise muscle into its territory and create conflict.
This is probably an example of natural evolution/selection where tigers that had slowly evolved more orange in their fur naturally, were able to feed more. This in turn meant the orange triat in their genes was passed on more frequently and became more dominant in the population.
In a sense it was probably a "random" mutation, but when it became useful and effective it was passed down quicker.
This is how evolution works. People often imagine some sort of logical system to it, but it really is just random mutations all over, with the advantageous ones propagating. There were probably a bunch of tigers with various odd colors or patterns at some point due to random mutations, but those evidently were less useful for hunting and reproducing than how they look now, so they died out in competition with the known variants.
Maybe the orange color happened to coincide with the patterns that worked best. Had their prey been able to see the orange tint it would have worked against the tiger, but since they can't it was allowed to flourish with that pattern. If true at all, it's a bit of a dead end since a mutation for the prey to begin seeing orange means tigers have narrowed into that pattern dependent on the color.
Probably both, except within the bounds of easily 'random' bounds. Supposing it were possible for a mammal to be green, it wouldn't matter of green were 'better', unless it happened at the right time. Orange could have won out simply because it was good enough to do one thing (camoflauge for pretty) and didn't have enough downside to message that benefit (high visibility to hunters or less valuable prey). Heck, a gene that turned a lion invisible could have turned up and it wouldn't be guaranteed to carry forward even if it didn't have any downsides if the random recipient also happened to be clumsy or unlucky and died of some random injury or disease.
Evolution doesn't really have any tools that aren't random, at least until intelligence came around to provide other 'non natural' paths, though of course those are just as natural as the others, just that we think we're special and above nature.
Recall that evolution isn't intelligent. Random mutations do random shit until one is accidentally successful. Random orange that appears green falls right into that scheme 😅
The green image of the tiger is terrifying. You wouldn't see it until it's eyes or teeth were baring down on you in a lush green forest. Thankfully humans weren't it's main prey and therefore it likely evolved to appear orange instead...
Tigers are generally crepuscular which means they’re most active around dawn or dusk, when the sun is very low in the sky. Their orange fur does not stand out so well when everything looks orange under the golden light of dawn.
Is that why cats can be so ginger and still good hunters? My orange stands out so much in the garden, but maybe to dichromatic mice he's super stealthy?
Elsewhere in the thread, someone said non-primate mammals (like mice) are dichromic (can't see orange), but birds are quadchromic (see even more colors than trichromics like primates). Is your cat only a good mouse-hunter, and comparatively a bad bird-hunter?
He is! 95% mice, very occasional birds. I had attributed that to birds other advantages (mostly being able to harass him by flying at him but not low enough he can reach) but perhaps it's also the colour!
Only in areas with tigers, and then it would only express itself enough if there were enough evolutionary pressure exclusively on that survival tactic.
As long as other causes of death happen to deer in tiger territories and as long as speed remains a good survival strategy, minor mutations that would only provide an advantage in extreme specific scenarios like a tiger stalking them wouldn't have a chance to be spread.
There's also a whole host of additional brain power that needs to be dedicated to more complex colour blending and processing, and that may add enough delay to offset any potential gain in recognizing a threat.
North Europe is a frozen wasteland where nothing grows for like a third of the year, being able to digest lactose in those months is hugely advantageous. I don't think "winter" counts as an "extreme specific scenario"
It's been far more important, evolution wise, to be agile and quick enough to avoid predators. Like a security camera can only tell you how someone was murdered.
Basically all mammalian pigmentation is just melanin, so mammal colorings are mostly just different amounts of brown combined with different amounts of red, and some animals don't even have the red.
AFAIK green is more expensive to produce. Plants use it since it's good at absorbing sunlight, but what's the advantage to a tiger, if their prey can't tell the difference?
Mammals don't come in green. We have 2 colours available to us, in different amounts: eumelanin, which is dark brown to black, and pheomelanin, which is yellow/red. We can mix those up in any way, or none (for white), but it'll never be green.
Now, many other animals don't have green either, peacock feathers for example, have brown pigment, but they have a structure that makes it look green and blue from wave interference.
Unfortunately, you can't really do that with fur, since you need to look at fur from all directions, not just the front.
Evolution is throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks (by sticking I mean reproducing bc you have better traits). If every single one of their prey and predators have this color blindness then orange and green would have the same effectiveness and whichever trait comes out first. If a prey/predator evolved to have better color vision then it would quickly become a disadvantage and after millions of years it's possible they evolve to have green fur.
There could be other benefits like being easier to attract mates.
Also some animals can see infrared, so even if their fur was perfect for the environment they could still have issues by being spotted, in which case the color doesn't matter as much and the colors for mating becomes more important.
Related to this - all fabrics used by the military need to be both Berry-amendment compliant, and NIR compliant. What that means is that, first, they need to be made in the USA (because you don't want to outsource military equipment if you end up going to war with the country that makes shit for you), and second, it needs to not show up like a sore thumb under infrared light, A lot of fabrics and dyes will show up as hot spots under IR, which means that they show up great with night vision. NIR-compliant fabrics will still appear camouflaged under IR.
That's why those nylon-cotton blend Crytek combat pants are something like $450, when the Chinese knock-offs made in poly-cotton are about $70.
I realized I couldn't think of a single green mammal so I DDG'd it and it's true. In a nutshell, the pigments that give mammals their colors are limited to warm colors (so no blue or green) and you could also fake a green color by reflecting mostly just green light off you (it's how birds do it) but it seems to be something only feathers and scales are good at, not fur.
Yeah the only one I can think of are sloths, which is kinda cheating cuz their green color comes from algae in their fur instead of natural pigmentation lol
Glad to have it confirmed tho, thanks!
A) Evolution is not directed. If a pre-tiger happens to be a more advantageous colour, it will have more offspring. There is no goal.
B) An orange tiger has the same camouflage from its prey's point of view as a green one, which is the thing that really matters. There is only one species a tiger is afraid of, and it's humans. I would wager that the orange also happens to act as a signal colour, both to other tigers and other predators (such as humans). Less run-ins and less territorial dispute sound pretty good.
This is also why hunting vests are bright orange. Easy for humans to spot, and deer get confused by there being a fucking tiger loose in New England.
I always wondered about that, thanks.
Apparently pink works as well, if a hunter wants a second color vest
That works on the same principle, except the deer thinks you're a panther.
Ok this makes complete sense now, thank you!
So was it just random that their fur is orange and not green? As both would help hunt prey just as well. Or is the advantage of being orange, that it wards away other tigers and predators that might otherwise muscle into its territory and create conflict.
It’s also orange because mammals can’t produce green pigments, so orange is the next best thing if your prey is red-green colorblind.
Our primary outer protein is basically keratin, which can be tinted orange(carotene), beige (collagen) or brown/black (melanin).
The green pigment is a byproduct of bilirubin catabolism, which we don't have because we use a different pathway to metabolize and recycle it.
Found the tiger.
Good eyesight!
Not particularly, just doesn't have hooves.
the green pigment? What green pigment?
For reptiles and other stuff, we don't have those.
... So how do green eyes work?
Addressed this previously here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/13887364
Awesome thanks!
Neat to learn mammals are normally green due to genetic structures.
So green hair and fur could never happen naturally.
The color of your eyes doesn't have anything to do with the cones and rods that pick up the light reflected off of objects.
I mean the pigment of the iris.
This is probably an example of natural evolution/selection where tigers that had slowly evolved more orange in their fur naturally, were able to feed more. This in turn meant the orange triat in their genes was passed on more frequently and became more dominant in the population.
In a sense it was probably a "random" mutation, but when it became useful and effective it was passed down quicker.
This is how evolution works. People often imagine some sort of logical system to it, but it really is just random mutations all over, with the advantageous ones propagating. There were probably a bunch of tigers with various odd colors or patterns at some point due to random mutations, but those evidently were less useful for hunting and reproducing than how they look now, so they died out in competition with the known variants.
Ya so we wouldn’t expect everything to be optimized or all “features” (traits) to be useful right?
But deer vision is immutable god creation. Checkmate.
Maybe the orange color happened to coincide with the patterns that worked best. Had their prey been able to see the orange tint it would have worked against the tiger, but since they can't it was allowed to flourish with that pattern. If true at all, it's a bit of a dead end since a mutation for the prey to begin seeing orange means tigers have narrowed into that pattern dependent on the color.
Are there any green animals that aren't reptiles, birds or insects? That might be a clue.
Sloths can be green if I recall correctly, they have a special clear type of hair that can grow moss or algea on, or in it or something
They can appear green because of the plant growth, but don’t produce the green color themselves.
Could probably come up with a few fishes, but no mammals come to mind
Probably both, except within the bounds of easily 'random' bounds. Supposing it were possible for a mammal to be green, it wouldn't matter of green were 'better', unless it happened at the right time. Orange could have won out simply because it was good enough to do one thing (camoflauge for pretty) and didn't have enough downside to message that benefit (high visibility to hunters or less valuable prey). Heck, a gene that turned a lion invisible could have turned up and it wouldn't be guaranteed to carry forward even if it didn't have any downsides if the random recipient also happened to be clumsy or unlucky and died of some random injury or disease.
Evolution doesn't really have any tools that aren't random, at least until intelligence came around to provide other 'non natural' paths, though of course those are just as natural as the others, just that we think we're special and above nature.
Yellows and browns and orange are a lot more related, and whatever color the pre-orange tiger ancestor was, it was almost certainly one of those.
Natural variation in the coat means some of those tigers were more orange than their peers. This trait was selected for.
Recall that evolution isn't intelligent. Random mutations do random shit until one is accidentally successful. Random orange that appears green falls right into that scheme 😅
Meanwhile my colorblind ass:
Do tigers themselves see themselves as orange, or are they genuinely surprised when humans easily spot them hiding in the grass?
My cats are surprised both by me seeing them sitting on an empty floor, and by other cats who they didn't see sitting on the floor.
So I can only conclude the answer is semi-perpetual amazement.
The green image of the tiger is terrifying. You wouldn't see it until it's eyes or teeth were baring down on you in a lush green forest. Thankfully humans weren't it's main prey and therefore it likely evolved to appear orange instead...
Umm, I've met tigers.
You need to explain to them that we're not prey, but they haven't figured it out yet.
I think the key word is "main".
fish are friends not food.
Tigers are generally crepuscular which means they’re most active around dawn or dusk, when the sun is very low in the sky. Their orange fur does not stand out so well when everything looks orange under the golden light of dawn.
Thank you, evolution, for allowing me to see orange so I can get an head start and outrun a mother fucking tiger!
You only need to outrun your travelbuddy.
Especially if your travel buddy is your mother.
Does the tiger buy her dinner first?
Better bring someone who's colorblind 😈
Is that why cats can be so ginger and still good hunters? My orange stands out so much in the garden, but maybe to dichromatic mice he's super stealthy?
Elsewhere in the thread, someone said non-primate mammals (like mice) are dichromic (can't see orange), but birds are quadchromic (see even more colors than trichromics like primates). Is your cat only a good mouse-hunter, and comparatively a bad bird-hunter?
He is! 95% mice, very occasional birds. I had attributed that to birds other advantages (mostly being able to harass him by flying at him but not low enough he can reach) but perhaps it's also the colour!
Wouldn't a mutation in the deer sight to see orange be vastly evolutionary beneficial?
Only in areas with tigers, and then it would only express itself enough if there were enough evolutionary pressure exclusively on that survival tactic.
As long as other causes of death happen to deer in tiger territories and as long as speed remains a good survival strategy, minor mutations that would only provide an advantage in extreme specific scenarios like a tiger stalking them wouldn't have a chance to be spread.
There's also a whole host of additional brain power that needs to be dedicated to more complex colour blending and processing, and that may add enough delay to offset any potential gain in recognizing a threat.
Most north europeans can digest lactose.
Black death IIRC. Milk was one of few easily availabke foods when farmers died off. So, extremely specific scenario.
North Europe is a frozen wasteland where nothing grows for like a third of the year, being able to digest lactose in those months is hugely advantageous. I don't think "winter" counts as an "extreme specific scenario"
Hey northern europe is not all Iceland.
It's been far more important, evolution wise, to be agile and quick enough to avoid predators. Like a security camera can only tell you how someone was murdered.
And then soon we'd have green tigers.
There are no green mammals because of some biology reason I can't remember.
Yeah I think it was a balance patch, because mammals that could photosynthesize were too OP.
Basically all mammalian pigmentation is just melanin, so mammal colorings are mostly just different amounts of brown combined with different amounts of red, and some animals don't even have the red.
Some birds and insects are green.
True, but they aren’t mammals.
No, why is it so hard for mammals to make green? Even green eyes are just a reflection/interferrence trick.
It's hard to do with fur, I believe. Birds and bugs also don't have green pigment, I believe. But they also don't have fur.
Also, the vast majority of mammals don't see green either.
Competitive advantage over their deer peers.
Do the tigers know they are orange?
Do humans know tigers are green?
Asking the real questions
Probably not, the same way humans don't know we are striped.
Ist is possible to make the own pattern visible? Like with special Cameras and Light?
I mean I saw these on people last time I took acid. Does that count?
No, they too are dichromats
Desperately need me a community just for tiger facts like this and pictures of tigers. Greatest of the Big Cats
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I wish lol. I don't have enough time to manage a community though. if someone else made one though i'd follow it instantly
I vaguely remember someone mentioning a community to give your community ideas to who may want to implement it... I forgot the name.
Oooh I just thought nature was fucking stupid
Almost like our eyes evolved to give danger its own colour.
This must be utterly terrifying for them.
"Why? I've always been orange." - tigers
Would not green be the obvious route then?
AFAIK green is more expensive to produce. Plants use it since it's good at absorbing sunlight, but what's the advantage to a tiger, if their prey can't tell the difference?
idk they could make green but then in, let's say, UV it's like a completely different color, so it'd just be the same situation but in another level
Thanks, eyes!
this sounds dumb. if that was the reason then why arent they just green so that theyre camoflaged to EVERY animal and not just those with bad eyes
Mammals don't come in green. We have 2 colours available to us, in different amounts: eumelanin, which is dark brown to black, and pheomelanin, which is yellow/red. We can mix those up in any way, or none (for white), but it'll never be green.
Now, many other animals don't have green either, peacock feathers for example, have brown pigment, but they have a structure that makes it look green and blue from wave interference.
Unfortunately, you can't really do that with fur, since you need to look at fur from all directions, not just the front.
So, mammals don't get green fur.
Then how do you explain this?
Damn.
Evolution is throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks (by sticking I mean reproducing bc you have better traits). If every single one of their prey and predators have this color blindness then orange and green would have the same effectiveness and whichever trait comes out first. If a prey/predator evolved to have better color vision then it would quickly become a disadvantage and after millions of years it's possible they evolve to have green fur.
There could be other benefits like being easier to attract mates.
Also some animals can see infrared, so even if their fur was perfect for the environment they could still have issues by being spotted, in which case the color doesn't matter as much and the colors for mating becomes more important.
Edit: Wording.
Related to this - all fabrics used by the military need to be both Berry-amendment compliant, and NIR compliant. What that means is that, first, they need to be made in the USA (because you don't want to outsource military equipment if you end up going to war with the country that makes shit for you), and second, it needs to not show up like a sore thumb under infrared light, A lot of fabrics and dyes will show up as hot spots under IR, which means that they show up great with night vision. NIR-compliant fabrics will still appear camouflaged under IR.
That's why those nylon-cotton blend Crytek combat pants are something like $450, when the Chinese knock-offs made in poly-cotton are about $70.
As a biologist, I'm always so happy with how versed your average Lemming is on evolution versus the bad place.
I'm not exactly average, but I'm definitely not a biologist lol
I’ve also heard green coloring is hard to achieve for mammals, but iirc the source was some tumblr post so take that with a grain of salt.
I realized I couldn't think of a single green mammal so I DDG'd it and it's true. In a nutshell, the pigments that give mammals their colors are limited to warm colors (so no blue or green) and you could also fake a green color by reflecting mostly just green light off you (it's how birds do it) but it seems to be something only feathers and scales are good at, not fur.
Yeah the only one I can think of are sloths, which is kinda cheating cuz their green color comes from algae in their fur instead of natural pigmentation lol
Glad to have it confirmed tho, thanks!
A) Evolution is not directed. If a pre-tiger happens to be a more advantageous colour, it will have more offspring. There is no goal.
B) An orange tiger has the same camouflage from its prey's point of view as a green one, which is the thing that really matters. There is only one species a tiger is afraid of, and it's humans. I would wager that the orange also happens to act as a signal colour, both to other tigers and other predators (such as humans). Less run-ins and less territorial dispute sound pretty good.
I don't know any animal with green fur. Reptiles and birds, sure. Maybe green fur does not work 🤷
You just need an algal symbiote.
Hey now…
Where have I heard this before?
That must be it. Sounds like something they'd say...
You're an all star?
Damn right :-)
Get your hunt on.
TIL
This kinda makes Lord Vetinari a little less cool tho...
Still pretty fun fact.