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the_lusankya t1_iy59hrn wrote

Reply to comment by Dorocche in Eli5: Why do birds and fish come in such a spectacular variety of colors and shapes compared to other animals? by thetravelman888

It's also worth noting that colourful mating displays aren't useful to mammals because most mammals are colourblind. And since bright colours are expensive, and tan/brown/black/white does a perfectly good job of camouflage, there's no advantage for mammals to have the bright colours.

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Megalocerus t1_iy71ozs wrote

A melanin variant can produce an orange shade. Tigers look very bright to us, but not to their prey, which can't make out the redness.

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Dorocche t1_iy5dxeg wrote

Also that birds aren't pressured as highly into camouflage because of their ability to fly. But given that they're not unique in their colors, I'm not sure how big of a contributor that actually is.

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bradles0 t1_iy90liy wrote

>because most mammals are colourblind

this one has always been weird to me, apes aren't the only mammal that spent a lot of its time finding red berries in a green background, why were we the only ones lucky enough to get trichromatic vision?

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