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Dynamic Darkness and Bright Stasis in Animals
A universal sensory bias is responsible for animals usually being colored so that our most perceptually dynamic body parts are darker and our relatively static parts are brighter.
“Thus every one would probably agree with Lipps and call a pure yellow happy, a deep blue quiet and earnest, red passionate, violet wistful; would perhaps feel that orange partakes at once of the happiness of yellow and the passion of red, while green partakes of the happiness of yellow and the quiet of blue; and in general that the brighter and warmer tones are joyful and exciting, the darker and colder, more inward and restful.”
— Dewitt H. Parker, The Principles of Aesthetics (1920)
Topics
∘ Marvelous Spatuletails
∘ Vogelkop Superb Birds of Paradise
∘ Western Parotias
∘ Red-Capped Manakins
∘ Flame Bowerbirds
∘ General Bird Coloration
∘ Rainbow Coloration in Birds
∘ Bird Coloration by Taxa
∘ Butterflies
∘ Mammals
∘ Dark — Dynamic Bias
∘ More and Less Excitement
∘ Psychological Duality
∘ Random Bird Sample Data (For Reference)
∘ Works Cited
Marvelous Spatuletails
The marvelous spatuletail Loddigesia mirabilis, an endangered hummingbird living in the forests of Peru, does a dance in which he flips his head forward and backward to expose either the purple coloration on top of his head or the green color of his neck, depending on how fast he’s moving. He alternates between motion and stillness, hanging stationary in the air and then moving suddenly and rapidly sideways. During periods of stillness he keeps his head back so the female sees the green on his neck. When he makes a sudden move to one side or the other he’s careful to switch colors by lowering his head to expose purple instead of green. He keeps green in sync with stillness and…
