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.
We might not be looking at them with the right eyes
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.
What about a moldy sloth?
Some slothmosses have and exclusive deal with their host!
What about the Hulk???
Not a mammal, he hatched from a green egg
The ones from Dr Seuss
Wouldn’t that make him a monotreme?
I think you’re right. I can’t think of a single green mammal. Why can we have green or blue eyes, but not other things?
I guess you’ve never heard of parrots. Or snakes. Or fish. Or insects.
Alan Davis?
Whoody Who?
https://youtu.be/0MDQp3fG4OI?si=tiVqzoE0m4p8F2Iu
Sorry it’s a short, couldn’t find a proper clip
Blue whales
Not a single one of those is a mammal. I guess you have never heard of one.
Damn. I never knew that these were mammals…
I’m guessing you misread the title as animals instead of mammals, and then didn’t read the actual post text
You might have to look up the word “mammal”
None of those are mammals…
I think you read mammals as animal
I did. My bad.
You’ll get’em next time.
Algae-covered sloths are about as close as you get.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
That’s why hunters’ jackets are bright orange. Hides them from game (whilst simultaneously making them visible to other people)
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?
At least humans have the highest sensitivity specifically around 555 nm (green).
Does it count if they are glowing bunnies?
Ha!! You really had to go down the “rabbit hole” for that one I bet! Awesome.
“yes uhh… We need to make bunnies that glow in the dark… for medicine… Yess.”
They’re out there but it’s been hard to document their existence since they blend in so well with their environment. This natural camouflage is a double-edged sword, however: they may be able to avoid getting eaten by predators but it also makes reproduction particularly challenging since they have a hard time finding one another to do it like the Discovery channel.
Even when a potential breeding pair are able to meet up, their coupling is far from guaranteed due to the abundance of other green orifices in their usual habitats. Grass-covered mole tunnels, mossy logs with holes in them and bee nests in leafy trees have all been accidental natural fleshlights for these poor creatures. Like they say, it’s not easy being green.
I don’t think the OP claimed fish were mammals
I don’t think the OP claimed fish were mammals
I wasn’t responding to the OP, and yes, you’re right.
Our points are not mutually exclusive.
By making a root level comment you were exclusively responding to OP. So yes you were.
I just don’t think the situation in Tel Aviv is sustainable and, moreover, the lack of action on the global stage to mitigate it is troubling.
By making a root level comment you were exclusively responding to OP. So yes you were.
My mistake. My goal in writing it was to reply to this comment, and not the OP.
What about Shrek
He’s an onion
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.
Blue? Hello blue whales & dolphins? :)
Baboons have some bright reds and blues, but they are certainly the exception that proves the rule on mammal colors.
I remember reading an article in a Nickelodeon magazine when I was a kid about a cat that had a genetic defect that gave it green fur. It looked pretty cool.
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.
Orion’s are demonstrably mammals, but unfortunately fictional.
You can’t prove that. Orions are real, do not slander the Word of the great prophet Roddenberry, Peace Be Upon Him.