Photo from open sources
It seems that wading through the forest, trying to sneak up unnoticed to prey, a tiger – in his bright red skin with black stripes – pretty hard. How the beast manages to merge with the environment and approach the necessary distance to your victim? It turns out red skin is an ideal means of disguising a predator, although for us this statement sounds illogical. And all because we humans can see red, blue and green colors. Not so in animal kingdom.
A recent study by British scientists showed that deer – the main prey of tigers – are able to see only blue and green colors, which makes them color blind in relation to red. Therefore, deer see tigers green – on a green background of the jungle.
Dr. John Fennel, who led the research team, decided also conduct an experiment with people. Its participants were shown a number Images: on the same background, red objects served as green british forest, on others a semi-arid desert land in Of Spain. The results confirmed the assumptions of scientists (and who would doubted?). People hardly see a tiger in the desert and well – on green forest background. For deer with their dichromatic vision (in Unlike trichromatic, which a person possesses) a predator merges equally with both the desert and the forest.
A photo from open sources
An interesting question arises: why are tigers living in the forest in during the evolution did not change their color to green? Fennel and him the team say it would require huge changes in mammalian biochemistry. Red color is the result of presence in animal hair of the chemical agent pheomelanin. Living on our planet tigers have different shades of the same color, which shows regional differences in the amount of pheomelanin, produced by each species of tiger.
Then ask another, no less interesting question: if tigers the deer seem green, why not the last to develop trichromatic vision that would undoubtedly enhance them survival? British scientists have no answer to this question. Perhaps nature is not interested in making deer well saw tigers, otherwise the process of natural selection and conservation of predator populations and their prey.
Although this study concerned only tigers and deer, a similar situation is observed in some other animals, to for example, leopards and roe deer, which perfectly demonstrates video below.
