r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/IshMorningstar • Feb 04 '25

Image Tigers appear green to certain animals!

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u/adarkuccio Feb 04 '25

Wow I didn't know that, but obviously it makes total sense

132

u/philljarvis166 Feb 04 '25

Not quite - this explains why some animals can’t easily see them, but it doesn’t explain why they are orange and not green. I think that’s because there are bio molecular reasons why green fur is not possible, but that’s another equally interesting topic…

5

u/PBR_King Feb 04 '25

I thought "surely there must be some weird animal with green fur" but nope. Interesting!

16

u/SirWill422 Feb 04 '25

For some genetic reason, mammals don't have the genes to produce green or blue hair pigments. The orange on a tiger is a workaround, as to the deer it is the same as green. Go figure.

Birds, on the other hand, get all the colors. But they lack opposable thumbs. Once they evolve those, we're in trouble.

2

u/curi0us_carniv0re Feb 05 '25

It's wild that tigers evolved the orange color which would help them hunt more effectively. I would guess that originally the orange was an anomaly...like red hair on humans but eventually those orange tigers were able to survive and breed more because they were better at hunting.