Are there any blue or green mammals?

BLUE WHALE

SUFFOCATED KITTEN

punk kids

(i.e., non-cetacean mammals defined in small part by having HAIR)

Mandrill noses!!!

isn't there a sloth that is green from fungus in its hair?

http://i27.tinypic.com/2e1zj9h.jpg

MY GRANDMOTHER WHO HAD A STROKE

Okay, we've found some blue examples, but how about green? (Fungus doesn't count, it's not part of the mammal.)

Is there some biological reason why mammal hair can't be blue or green?

yes

Well what is it then?

Probably something to do with melanin.

haha xxxp

Is there "some biological reason" why you can not be seeing it is BEING blue!

Does the colour of mammal hair always come from melanin?

sometimes it comes from manic panic hair dye

http://no.wikipedia.org

People are warning me about this line of questioning, Tuomas, but it was proven here today! Sug kuken til faren din.

None are known to have hair that naturally is blue or green in color although some cetaceans, along with the mandrills appear to have shades of blue skin. Many mammals are indicated as having blue hair or fur, but in all known cases, it has been found to be a shade of gray. The two-toed sloth and the polar bear may seem to have green fur, but this color is caused by algae growths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal#Integumentary_system

Don't know for sure, obviously, but maybe:

- blue: water only seems blue for the first meter or so, any deeper it's all black - dark on top for who's looking down & silver/white on the bottom for who's looking up = best camouflage

- green: useless in autumn & winter, useless unless you're small enough to be between grass or high enough to be between leaves = not as logical a camouflage colour as you'd expect?

Okay, but that doesn't explain why there are no mammals with blue or green hair.

(x-post)

The best answer is "natural selection". I suggest reading a high school biology book.

If green is not logical, why are so many lizards and birds green?

Javisst, enda en Finsk kuksuger, akkurat det vi trenger.

Darwin evolved them like that to test our faith in his theory. (xpost)

Because there are more lizards and birds that live in trees than there are mammals, plus the mammals living in trees tend to live in the trunks and not out on the branches.

Again, read a high school biology book.

its because lizards just dont try hard enough - theyre lazy thats well known

But many land-living lizards are green too! Plus, wouldn't it make sense for small grass-dwelling mammals to be green?

http://www.drinkatwork.com/onlyaman.jpg

Not everything and everyone is camouflaged out there - there are also black lizards with bright yellow spots and poison dart frogs with bright orange on their back - some animals defend themselves with camouflage, others are poisonous, others are fast, others are smart, there's no one rule they have to follow.

http://www.gaup.co.uk/orville.jpg

Also, HI DERE has been OTM all the time :-)

(xxpost) also a lot of animals are colour blind - they only see in black and white, or in some species a limited part of the humanly visible spectrum.

http://davidjay.net/forumpics/amber_shannon_sad.jpg

sometimes people are blue ;_;

Not everything and everyone is camouflaged out there - there are also black lizards with bright yellow spots and poison dart frogs with bright orange on their back - some animals defend themselves with camouflage, others are poisonous, others are fast, others are smart, there's no one rule they have to follow.

Of course, but the fact that there doesn't seem to be a single green mammal species in existence makes me think the reason for that must be something else than natural selection, like that mammal hair or skin simply can't be green for some reason.

http://davidjay.net/forumpics/amber_shannon_sad.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/72/180540522_e9cbdaad8d.jpg

I don't think there are any reasons other than natural selection why animals look like they do.

http://forum.darwincentral.org/search.php ?

green mammal:

http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2007/10/30/sweeps/rock.jpg

I think there might be some physical limitations to what colour mammal hair can be?

Because mammalian coloring comes from melanin and melanin only comes in varying shades of brown? Well, from dark brown to pinky-reddish brown.

For the non-earth tones (OH HAI, MANDRILLS), I give you this:

According to Richard Prum, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of vertebrate zoology at the Peabody Museum, scientists to date may very well have been wrong about the actual details of how the coloration occurs. Working in collaboration with a University of Kansas mathematics professor, Rodolfo Torres, Prum has shown that mammalian blue results more from coherent scattering of light rather than incoherent scattering.

Coherent scattering is what gives opal gems and oil slicks their iridescent color. Opal gems have crystal planes, and oil slicks have laminar layers, the parallel layers formed in non-turbulent streamline flow. These regularly arranged structures allow oil slicks and opal to scatter light at different angles, producing different hues of color. Whereas incoherent scattering models require the reflecting surfaces to be at randomized positions relative to the incident light, coherent scattering models require reflecting surfaces to have non-random, highly regular organization relative to incident light. Hence color produced from coherent scattering is described in terms of the phase interactions between light reflected from multiple surfaces. Incoherent scattering, however, considers each reflecting surface as spatially independent from the others and describes color as a function of the light reflected from individual surfaces.

Scientists had adopted the earlier explanation as an easy generalization from what was seen in the case of the sky, one where a non-iridescent color is produced by incoherent scattering. But they were wrong. The mistake was due in part to a sloppy characterization of all non-iridescent colors as incoherently produced, Prum explains. Mammalogists had assumed that melanocytes, biological colloids, or turbid protein media present in the dermis served as the randomized reflecting surfaces required by Tyndall scattering when, in reality, the dermal collagen fibers were responsible for producing the color.

http://research.yale.edu/ysm/article.jsp?articleID=290

Good, you've answered your own question. Let's talk about sandwiches. (xpost)

Of course, but the fact that there doesn't seem to be a single green mammal species in existence makes me think the reason for that must be something else than natural selection, like that mammal hair or skin simply can't be green for some reason.

-- Tuomas, Thursday, February 28, 2008 1:00 PM

Yes, the evolutionary paths of the mammalia class privileged other traits over green foliage-camouflages at a very early evolutionary branch. As eons passed and the other traits developed, specialized, and refined, the likelihood of the sustained mutation necessary to change the total hue of a furry animal became less and less likely as adaptation covered in other (and selfishly a mammal might say 'better') ways.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/72/180540522_e9cbdaad8d.jpg
l/r tuomas/blue mammal

Do blue sandwiches occur in nature? Why not?

http://www.hulklibrary.com/hulk/images/hulk-from-the-movie.jpg

http://media.kval.com/images/071219_karason_northrup_470.jpg

Sometimes I like to chew up a blue-corn tortilla chip and use the resulting paste as a spread between two intact blue-corn tortilla chips.

((rolling my eyes))

omg how could we all have forgotten the blue man for so long

there's no reason in principle why a mammal's being green would not be selected for in some instance somewhere, so it seems to be a case of natural selection being constrained by the genetic variation it has to work with.

http://www.vinnylingham.com/uploaded_images/JFCVABMG-781023.JPG

uh, super x-post

http://www.code-d.com/papa-smurf/images/papa-smurf.gif

there's no reason in principle why a mammal's being green would not be selected for in some instance somewhere, so it seems to be a case of natural selection being constrained by the genetic variation it has to work with.

Yeah, I think Laurel's melanin answer explains this.

is that an appendectomy scar?

No, it's the top of his pants.

I don't think Smurfs are mammals, I explained my theory of them in this
thread:

The weakest cartoon characters

I think the Smurfs functioned as this amoeba-like community, whose members reproduce by cloning themselves via mitosis. They only have one member who appears to be female, so I think that sort of rules out sexual reproduction. Also, the clone theory is supported by the fact that they all look alike, except for Smurfette, who must be a mutation. As for why Papa Smurf is the only old Smurf, I think the Smurf community goes through a life cycle where the new generation, once it's all grown up, cannibalizes the previous generation, letting only the strongest memeber of it live, and he then becomes the new leader.

-- Tuomas, 4. helmikuuta 2008 23:14 (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

"Tuomas, 4."

But that IS a brilliant theory though.

Green skin/fur on a mammal would only be advantageous in a climate where the foliage and surroundings are evergreen, namely tropical rainforests, right? There aren't a whole lot of mammals in those areas other than monkeys and jungle cats, right? Fauna-wise, it's mostly birds, fish, reptiles and insects. And the monkeys didn't need to evolve camouflage because of speed and agility to evade predators; jungle cats didn't need it because they're the top of the food chain, not counting humans.

That's all top-of-my-head, let me know what I've got wrong.

-- Kevin Tuomas Smith

Yeah, but there's likely no incremental advantage in the camouflage afforded by slight blueness/slight greenness, and as a complex and polygenetic trait, the complete mutation necessary to change the properties of overall coloration (w/r/t melanin) wouldn't likely be sustained over the multitude of generations necessary to breed azure jungle badgers, or what-have-you.

Is there some biological reason why mammal hair can't be blue or green?

-- Tuomas, Thursday, February 28, 2008 8:26 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/index.php

I think the answer must be simply that at some point in the evolutionary process natural selection preferred mammals with hair (maybe before they were mammals per se), even though the physical nature of hair allows only for certain colourations. Maybe warm-bloodedness, which I think hair partially enables, was a bigger advantage than camouflage for mammals?

(xxx-post)

No longer how much we figure out on this thread, Tuomas, you're still gonna have to accept that you're never going to get on a blue-skinned anime chick

melanin theory fails when applied to green eyed humans, BTW

xpost hahaha

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1169/is_n5_v33/ai_17338585

Includes several sort-of reasons, such as small mammals - the ones needing protective coloration the most - typically live on the ground, scurrying in leaf litter. "Dead leaves aren't green," she points out. "They're brown." and most predators of mammals are other mammals, and mammals usually have poor color vision; ergo, green wouldn't help.

Hm, OK, my quotes became a bit confusing there, so just follow the blimming link, people!

melanin theory fails when applied to green eyed humans, BTW

well eyes and hair are different things, are they not?

The short answer is that mammals are hairy. Mammalian hair has only two kinds of pigment: one that produces black or brown hair and one that produces yellow or reddish-orange hair. Mixing those two pigments is never going to yield a bright, contestable green.

this seems to me to be the most logical explanation.

Why do some of my veins look blue then? (farewell if it's bad news)

unoxygenated blood

(if your veins are any color other than blue, then either worry or stop inhaling so much)

some veins are green too, aren't they?

maybe if you're yella

or a vulcan

are vulcans mammals?

there was never any indication that spock was wearing a wig, so..

I wonder what Vulcans evolved from. Were their ancestors apelike? Did the history of their evolution mirror our own, since they are so similar physiologically to humans?

I do know there was that episode of TNG that explained that all the races of the Star Trek universe were spawned from a single humanoid race that seeded the universe with DNA, which had a specia message encoded in it or something.

also obviously encoded with instructions to evolve latex appliances on the forehead

I loved that episode of Voyager where they met the aliens with the latex toasters on their heads.

the Toasterians

from the planet Po-P'tart

they met the aliens with the latex toasters on their heads.

Really?! Was that like a Star Trek self-parody or something?

The Blue Duiker...
http://homepage.mac.com/wildlifeweb/mammal/duiker/blue_duiker_5440tk.jpg
http://static-p.arttoday.com/thw/thw8/PH/ss5255_20030322/wonders_of_nature/7687223.thw.jpg?blue_duiker
A miniature African antelope--not vividly colored, unfortunately. I can't tell if the fur is genuinely blue or if it is some kind of trick of light which gives them this sheen.

Well, it says above that mammal fur can't be truly blue, so it must be some sort of trick of light.