this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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Tigers 🐅 🐯 (mander.xyz)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 186 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It’s also orange because mammals can’t produce green pigments, so orange is the next best thing if your prey is red-green colorblind.

[–] [email protected] 102 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Our primary outer protein is basically keratin, which can be tinted orange(carotene), beige (collagen) or brown/black (melanin).

The green pigment is a byproduct of bilirubin catabolism, which we don't have because we use a different pathway to metabolize and recycle it.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Found the tiger.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Good eyesight!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Not particularly, just doesn't have hooves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

the green pigment? What green pigment?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago

For reptiles and other stuff, we don't have those.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

more accurately, orange pigments are readily available. Nothing fundamentally stops mammals (or anything else) from developing a green. Note for example many animals have green eyes.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

From what I understand green eyes are a bit weird as far as coloration goes, as they look green due to the way light is interacting with small amounts of melanin in the iris (the same pigment that makes eyes brown) rather than due to green pigment. I’m not sure that could be replicated in fur vs in a liquid environment like with the eye.

Birds mimic green colored pigments with iridescence (except turacos, they have green pigments for real) in their feathers, but I’m not sure that’s something mammals can do structurally in fur the way birds can in feathers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Both blue and green eyes in humans and blues and many greens in vertebrates are structural, yeah. Yes the structural coloring could be recreated in fur or skin. (noting that many mammals do structural IR effects in their fur, famously polar bears)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I wish I could find the sources from when I was reading about this months ago, it was more about evolution in terms of things that can happen and not ‘random’ mutations, and one of the examples was tigers with orange fur instead of green. It’s not physically impossible to have structural coloring (although the fact there are no green mammals suggests a strong inhibition somewhere along the line), but you first have to have the genetic and molecular groundwork laid to allow it to happen. Ex: it’s not physically impossible for animals to manufacture their own vitamin C, but humans just can’t do it because we don’t have the necessary molecular pathways other animals use. I hope that makes sense for what I’m trying to get at.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

... So how do green eyes work?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Addressed this previously here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/13887364

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Awesome thanks!

Neat to learn mammals are normally green due to genetic structures.

So green hair and fur could never happen naturally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The color of your eyes doesn't have anything to do with the cones and rods that pick up the light reflected off of objects.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I mean the pigment of the iris.