Why do tigers have orange fur?

 

How their victim perceives them plays a role in this.

 

Animals' patterns and colors serve several functions, from attracting mates to discouraging predators from eating them. However, the ability to sneak up on their prey undetected is crucial for ambush predators like tigers. Is there a particular reason why tigers are orange instead of any other colors that could be possible for them?

 

Humans employ orange for obvious objects like traffic cones and safety jackets, so this is a valid concern. Because orange stands out in most settings, we can easily detect tigers.

 

However, this is because humans possess trichromatic color vision. The retina is a tiny layer at the back of the eye that receives light from the outside world. Two types of light receptors in the retina, rods, and cones, process this light. Rods are employed mostly in low-light settings since they detect only brightness variations, not color. Most humans have three types of cones—cones for blue, cones for green, and cones for red—that allow us to perceive color. This ability to distinguish between the three fundamental colors and their many shades gives rise to the term "trichromatic vision." Primates like monkeys and apes also use a visual mechanism similar to ours.

 

However, most terrestrial mammals, such as dogs, cats, horses, and even deer, have dichromatic color vision. That means they can only see in blue and green because only those two colors require cones in their retinas. As a result of relying solely on their green and blue cones for perception, these people cannot discern between different shades of red and green and are therefore categorized as colorblind. It's probably the same for creatures with dichroic vision.

 

Prey animals like deer, who live on land, have a dichromatic vision and see the tiger as green. This makes it far more difficult to notice the tiger as it lurks in the grass or behind a bush.

 

While it's true that trichromats like me would have a tougher time seeing a green tiger, evolution doesn't function with the components needed to generate green fur.

 

According to John Fennell, a lecturer in animal sensing and biometrics at Bristol Veterinary School in the United Kingdom, "essentially, it is easier to manufacture browns and oranges because of the biomolecular structure of the makeup of the animal" than to produce green. Only the sloth has a greenish hue to its fur, and even that is an illusion. It's a type of algae that thrives on its fur. Also, there are no green-haired animals that I'm aware of.

 

Fennell has utilized AI to determine the best camouflage colors and patterns for different settings. His research from 2018 was featured on "Animals Behaving Badly," a BBC One show.

 

Fennell told Live Science that they had the presenter conduct a "kind of a rudimentary experiment" to see how effective the camouflage would be if the viewer were a dichromat. She was colorblind since she wore dichromatic spectacles, even though the image was in trichromatic color or standard color. We took two sets of photos, one with her glasses on and one without, and had her look for tigers in both. When the presenter put on the dichromatic glasses, it took him much longer to spot the tiger.

 

Why, then, would prey animals not have developed the ability to see orange if natural selection favors traits that help a species survive?

 

You'd think that if the prey had greater eyesight in an evolutionary arms race, the predator would get it first. "Wrong," said Fennell. However, there does not appear to be any selective pressure for trichromatism in the environment, especially in deer, the tiger's primary food source. Tigers are also dichromats, so, likely, they are similarly confused about their actual color.

 

Fennell argued, "Therefore, the evolutionary arms race doesn't exist for that color, per se." Simply put, "through the process of evolution, the tiger has gained a pattern of colors that helps it hide in the jungle where it lives."

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/why-are-tigers-orange

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/vectors/satwa-pola-kulit-garis-garis-1296970/

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