Brain Temperature and Animal Coloration

The hue-heat effect, interpreted as a universal preference for darker colors in hotter environments and brighter colors in colder environments, is the simplest explanation for the ecogeographical effect known as Gloger’s rule.

Richard Friese’s “Polar bear family.” Photo from WikiArt. Public domain.

“Consequently, the closer the skin is to the Equator, the darker and more melanized it is. The closer the skin is to the pole, the lighter and less melanized it is” (Cibangu 2015).

Contents

∘ Hue Heat
∘ Gloger
∘ Problems With Ecological Explanations for Gloger’s Rule
∘ Hue Heat and Brain Temperature
∘ Common Factors and Gloger’s Rule
∘ Other Rules and Aesthetic Structures
∘ Works Cited

Hue Heat

Studies have shown repeatedly that human subjects adjust their determination of the temperature of an object based on its color, or the temperature of a room depending on whether it’s filled with redder or bluer light (Mogensen and English 1926, Berry 1961, Ziat et al. 2016, Albers 2015). Darker colors are judged to be cooler than brighter colors…