Why aren't rabbits green?
Mikko J Kolkkala
mkolkkal at cc.Helsinki.FI
Sat Dec 21 13:00:48 EST 1996
Grace K Hsu (ghsu at ic.sunysb.edu) wrote:
: >
: > Given the fact that rabbits are rather defenceless prey animals that
: > spend almost all of their life outside the warren eating against a
: > green background, why haven't they evolved to be green?
Partial explanation could be the poor ability of mammalian predators to see
colours - grass is not green for them!
On the other hand some avian predators have excellent colour vision, so
green fur _could_ be useful for rabbits.
--
(: Mikko Kolkkala :) (: Department of Biosciences, :)
:) email: mkolkkal at helsinki.fi (: :) Division of Genetics (:
(: tel +358-9-70859115 :) (: P.O. box 56, FIN-00014 :)
:) http://www.helsinki.fi/~mkolkkal (: :) University of Helsinki (:
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