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A colour to birds and to humans: why is it so different?

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Abstract

The avian visual model has become nowadays a standard for quantifying colours of birds. Here, I review the biological bases of the importance of visual modelling to most ornithologists, focusing on the causes of the difference in colours to birds and to humans, both proximately and ultimately. Not only the sensitivity of retinal photoreceptors and performances of ocular media, but also the number of photoreceptor types are all attributed to the bird–human difference proximately. As the ultimate cause, the evolutionary history of birds and humans should divide the colours perceived by them: birds would retain their colour vision from the ancient ancestry, while primates such as humans would have reacquired the colour vision relatively recently. Finally, I review how to process and to analyze data produced by the visual model.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the speakers in the symposium at IOC26, W Kitamura, G Morimoto, T Yamasaki, and particularly M Stevens, the keynote speaker, for their contribution. I thank members of the Scientific Programme Committee for their editorial support, and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. I thank N Hart for providing photoreceptor sensitivity data. I received financial supports from Grants-in-Aid by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science grant no. 24770028 (Young Scientists B) and 23255004 (Basic A).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, Rikkyo University, 3-34-1 Nishi-Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo, 171-8501, Japan

    Keita D. Tanaka

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  1. Keita D. Tanaka
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Correspondence to Keita D. Tanaka.

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Communicated by E. Matthysen.

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Tanaka, K.D. A colour to birds and to humans: why is it so different?. J Ornithol 156 (Suppl 1), 433–440 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-015-1234-1

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