Isn't it pretty common in marine animals? Lots of fish, dolphins, whales, etc. Or do they count as grey?
Only cartoon fish are blue.
Why blue animals are so rare
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#22As for animals, they need to avoid predators. I'd say that blue isn't the best color to hide in most areas. So selection should favor other colors, unless the color is used as a warning, e.g. to signal a poisonous creature.
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#23On a related note, blue LEDs are also the most rare, for engineering reasons, and their production led to a Nobel Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/press-release...
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#24As for animals, they need to avoid predators. I'd say that blue isn't the best color to hide in most areas. So selection should favor other colors, unless the color is used as a warning, e.g. to signal a poisonous creature.
Also IIRC (and cursory searches seem to agree) blue is the most common/prominent color other animals see
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#25Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#26On a related note, blue LEDs are also the most rare, for engineering reasons, and their production led to a Nobel Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/press-release...
Video about the history of blue LEDs by veritasium:
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#27My favourite flower, which I have just discovered: Phacelia (blue/violet color) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phacelia_tanacetifolia )
1) Seeds easy to find in most stores.
2) Each strand has an array of flowers which bloom serially => quite long blooming timespan (and damage by bad weather is limited if it affected only the flowers).
3) Bumblebees absolutely love them (this year I put exclusively Phacelia seeds into 1 of my 2 big pots on the balcony, with max seed density, and often there were up to 10 bumblebees at once per pot checking them), and I absolutely love bumblebees (they look clumsy, they're kind of funny + they absolutely ignore me, respectively when they happen to fly in my direction and they notice me they take a turn as soon as their flight envelope allows them to)
4) This might be just random or caused by some other factor like weather/neighbours/whatever, anyway:
since I planted this year Phacelia flowers and the bumblebees started coming I have hardly seen any wasps nor especially hornets (I've seen twice a hornet flying by, but it took a large curve from my balcony - during the same timespan at the other sides of my flat I noticed four times hornets investigating in front of the windows). Last year (without Phacelia/bumblebees) I had a lot more problems with wasps&hornets => maybe wasps & hornets noticed the bumblebees and thought "ah, already taken/busy!" and therefore marked my balcony as a no-go zone?
EDIT:
I recommend the app "PlantNet" for Android ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=829216199869931637... ) & iOS ( https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/plantnet/id600547573 ): take a picture of your plant/flower and you get the name.
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#28Fascinating article. But early on I had one question - why is a blue that is made by sunlight hitting hair nanostructures considered a "simulation" thereby differentiating it from color made through sunlight interaction with biochemistry of surfaces and subsurfaces? To draw that out further, by the same logic we might consider properties of human-made metamaterials also simulations?
I believe all of the colors of butterfly wings, and of all feathered animals are produced in the same way? I've always assumed that "simulation" has a local definition in the study of biological color reproduction, where light interactions with ultra fine structure at the atomic level is the default, or perhaps maybe on the time scale of evolution, the oldest means of reproducing color.
Contrast this witb a much coarser structural phenomenon manifesting at a level much closer to macroscopic is thus considered to be a "cheaper" simulation of that effect, in order to derive its same selective benefits but with less of a radical genetic shift required for the production of the right proteins etc.
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#29Isn't it pretty common in marine animals? Lots of fish, dolphins, whales, etc. Or do they count as grey?
Also think so. Plenty of fish are vibrant blue, the blue whale is grayish blue but still blue.
Also plenty of birds are blue are they not?
And I totally forgot about butterflies and other insects as well
Re: Why blue animals are so rare
#30Just saw a Blue Jay last week. Chicory has nice blue flowers. Both are common in Chicagoland.
There are many birds which are blue, but none of them have blue pigments [1]. It's a light-scattering effect. [1] https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2016/05/09/the...
Important bit from the article:
When white light strikes a blue feather, the keratin pattern causes red and yellow wavelengths to cancel each other out, while blue wavelengths of light reinforce and amplify one another and reflect back to the beholder’s eye … [D]ifferent shapes and sizes of these air pockets and keratin make different shades of blue.”