Birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects? Sure. But no mammals.

So I had to google it. Apparently, there is a sloth that moves around so slowly moss grows all over it and it doesn’t care. So it may appear green, but only in the sense that it wears it.

  • MxM111
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    11 year ago

    Blue. And wales and dolphins do not count, they are not land mammals and they are barely blue.

  • inspired
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    161 year ago

    Best I’ve got is sloths. And they’re only green because algae grows on them. And I know it sounds like cheating because they aren’t intrinsically green but before you completely discount it there are animals that wouldn’t be the color they are in a different environment. For instance, flamingos are only pink because of the seafood they eat. If fed a different diet they can be almost white.

    • 🇨🇦 tunetardisOP
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      71 year ago

      Yeah fair. I had painted glass fish in my aquarium at one point and discovered the “paint” came from feeding them dyed food and eventually faded away when I gave them normal food back at home. They are naturally transparent for the most part which, frankly, I thought was cooler. I did have a gourami that was legit green though, as far as I could tell.

  • @[email protected]
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    421 year ago

    This may have already been covered but whilst there might not be mammals that appear green to human eyes there are certainly mamals that appear green to the prey/predators in their environment.

    Perfect example is a tiger who (to us) stands out like a sore thumb with its orange fur but is perceived as green with black stripes through the eyes of its prey, making it very well camouflaged in the jungle.

    • 🇨🇦 tunetardisOP
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      61 year ago

      Wow, that is fascinating!

      Makes me wonder about the other direction, going into the near infrared as opposed to UV. I remember from a class in remote sensing that many plants are actually most reflective in that band (more so than in green, even). NIR air photos are often used by biologists to get an indication of the health of a forest. But I have no idea whether animals also reflect NIR? It may be that most animals cannot see in that band in the first place, so it would not offer any camouflage advantage.

  • @[email protected]
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    381 year ago

    You’d think evolutionary, there would be at least some green mammals to help them blend into the plant life around them. Like bunnies hiding in bushes, or monkeys in trees. I suppose shades of brown work similarly in the same situations.

    I know some predators don’t see color the same way humans do — could the lack of green and dominance of brown have something to do with seeing motion, or heat, or something else we don’t see?

    • @[email protected]
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      101 year ago

      This is just a guess, but could it be that brown is more useful since mammals (at least the first ones) dwell on and in the ground, where brown would be more beneficial for survival?

    • 🇨🇦 tunetardisOP
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      151 year ago

      Right? I guess that’s what puzzles me the most about it. It must be really hard for mammals to become green since you would think it would confer an advantage in many environments you find them in.

      I guess there are a lot of mammal species that kind of make themselves scarce during the broad daylight hours, so maybe green camouflage is less relevant if you’re only out between dusk and dawn?

    • Afghaniscran
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      521 year ago

      iirc, the reason tigers are black and orange stripey is because deers and whatever else they eat don’t see orange, they see green. This blends the tiger in with the surroundings better.

      • @[email protected]
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        221 year ago

        That’s why hunters’ jackets are bright orange. Hides them from game (whilst simultaneously making them visible to other people)

  • inspired
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    181 year ago

    This is an interesting question but I don’t think it is restricted to green. Isn’t the same true of purple, blue and red? I’m not talking about just reddish like human hair or a red panda but truly bright red like a cardinal. I would imagine it has something to do with our evolutionary history. Complete speculation here but laced with a few facts I picked up. I hear the common ancestor of mammals emerged around the time the dinosaurs became extinct and was basically a tiny rodent like a shrew. I wonder if as a small animal that can’t fly or swim it had to hide a lot and basically just came in shades of brown. So maybe any genes for other colors were lost before that common mammalian ancestor emerged and although mammals have lots of patterns they don’t have many colors.

    • 🇨🇦 tunetardisOP
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      31 year ago

      Great read! That explains a lot.

      I’ve been deep diving a bit myself and found this article that explains another thing that’s puzzled me over the years. Some birds have crazy vibrant coloration that almost glistens, like peacock feathers. Outside of the zoo, I’ve noticed it a bit in common grackles. They look black on first glance, but when you study them closely, they have this kind of purple sheen around their heads. Apparently, it’s still melanin at work here, but it’s structured in a very special way.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 year ago

      So I skimmed that and it seems the tldr is mammals have melanin (and I’m guessing the other animals don’t)

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      Crazy. I had to look it up and I found some stuff, including this old web article from 2002 that talks about this cat. The cat’s name was, Miss Greeny, apparently.

      There are multiple sources, but there is no wiki page and none of the sources seem well known, so I’m having a hard time figuring out if it’s legit, or just a really good hoax.