If cattle see the world in black and white, then perhaps it's not worth asking why bulls don't like the color red. However, some cattle owners still prefer to exclude bright, bloody-colored items from their everyday life, so as not to inadvertently provoke an aggressive individual to attack. This article will share information about whether these animals are really partial to objects of scarlet shades, and whether one should seriously fear their unexpected attack due to the appearance of such an irritant.
A little background on bullishness
Most modern bulls have a rather hot-tempered and irritable disposition. The aggressive behavior of adults is explained by their genes. These animals are the ancestors of the ancient wild aurochs, which previously inhabited forested areas and forest-steppe throughout Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor.
The tours were significantly different in appearance from their contemporaries:
- some individuals could reach one ton of live weight;
- had huge powerful horns;
- they had very hard and impenetrable skin.
A stern appearance and a strong disposition were necessary for the aurochs to protect themselves from wild predators. In addition, his hot-tempered character helped him win battles with other tours for the cow he liked.
All these characteristic inclinations were inherited by modern herbivores and predatory animals. At the same time, herbivorous bulls are endowed with a more pronounced irritable disposition. Living in close-knit herds, they had to defend their positions every day and fight for a tasty morsel of food.
Using an aggressive disposition for fighting purposes
The idea that as soon as a bull sees a red rag he will go berserk was firmly formed against the backdrop of the traditional bull show widespread in Italy. The public spectacle focuses specifically on the animal’s reaction to the bright banner (muleta).
The bullfighter waves the red banner in front of the bull's gaze, which undoubtedly irritates the latter. In this case, the animal is subjected to a constant attack of sharp spears into its body. A bleeding male, in fact, can already rush at the enemy without objects flashing before his eyes.
In Spain, an experiment was carried out more than once using panels of other colors. It turned out that bulls react to other bright colors in the same way as they do to red.
Scientists have concluded that a newborn calf, adult males, and even cows are endowed with dichromatic vision.
This suggests that their eyes are equipped with only two types of light-sensitive proteins. The third type, which is characteristic of human vision, is absent in cattle. It is this type of protein that is responsible for the visibility of bright colors, due to the fact that it is closest to the end of the red spectrum. This is why bulls can see an object of any color, but cannot distinguish its shade.
Reasons for partiality to red objects
Why does a bull react to the color red if it doesn’t see it? Due to his aggressive nature, the male is wary of all moving objects. Even a passing cow or other animals attracts his painful attention.
First he reacts to the stimulus with the attitude morale. Only after some time has passed, the bulls recognize and realize that there is no danger.
Shepherds dress in plain clothes of black and light colors in front of the bulls, but if a person dresses in fiery red clothes and stands motionless for several minutes in front of the animal’s gaze, he will not receive a reaction from the latter.
But as soon as he makes a couple of sharp movements, he will immediately see the aggressive mood of the bull.
According to his character, outside mating season males dominate cows. And only during sexual arousal do male cattle slightly lose their vigilance and for a couple of hours turns from an aggressor into a loving bull, intoxicated by voluptuous feelings.
To summarize, color has minimal impact on bull behavior. And bullfighters use a red muleta only to attract the attention of spectators and distract the same attention from their person directly from the bull.
We hope this article answered your questions and clarified controversial issues concerning the vision of bulls.
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Instructions
The well-established and widespread opinion about the irritating effect of red objects on a bull is taken as an axiom. Is it true, we're talking about about a claim made outside of academia. Researchers of vision characteristics confidently declare that animals for the most part are deprived of the excellent, from a human point of view, ability to see the world in bright colors.
And although there is also no unity in the scientific world, the presence of points of intersection of views allows us to talk about poor color vision, and some representatives of the squirrel family. But what about the relatives of the ancient aurochs - domesticated bulls and? It turns out that the color scheme of the bullish world consists of a part of the red spectrum of low intensity and, in descending order of perception, gray, green and blue shades, or rather, reminders of them. The structure of the eye of cattle, as the subfamily of bovines is called in animal husbandry, indicates the presence in the back of the retina of two types of nerve cells-photoreceptors: rods, responsible for black-and-white twilight vision, and cones, providing daytime color perception of images.
So what makes the two-horned giant angry, teased in the first two thirds of the bullfight by a large double-sided cloak (pink-yellow or pink-blue), called “capote”, and in the final third - by a small muleta cloak made of bright red flannel. Not a color at all, but an obsessive waving. The presence of a “blind spot” in the visual field in the area of the nose, a good reaction to movement and poor vision of distant details irritate an animal that already has a bad character.
One of the secrets that always irritates Toro is the smell. The red muleta retains traces of blood left after previous fights, invisible to bullfight spectators. A sensitive sense of smell warns the animal of danger, makes it look for the enemy, become ferocious and attack the irritant, which is the bullfighter or other participants in the fight - picadors, banderilleros, horses... Fortunately for two-legged opponents, the poor eyesight of the bull most often makes these attacks fruitless. But this doesn't always happen.
It is believed that bulls react aggressively to scarlet shades. Actually this is not true. Along with all other representatives, they suffer from color blindness. Then why don't bulls like the color red if they don't actually distinguish it?
Destruction of the myth
In 2007, Discovery Channel's Mythbusters tested a live bull in three separate experiments. Their goal was to find out why bulls don’t like the color red and whether this is actually true. The essence of the first experiment was as follows: three stationary flags of red, blue and white. The animal attacked all three, regardless of shade. Next were three mannequins, and again the indiscriminate bull left no one unattended. Finally, the time has come for living people. There were three people in the arena, the one in red stood motionless, the other two cowboys moved in a circle. The bull began to chase the moving daredevils, but ignored the motionless “red” one.
Why don't bulls like
Spanish matadors began using a small red cape in bullfighting in the early 17th century. Since then, people have probably decided that it is this shade that turns a peaceful animal into a real beast. The fact is that scarlet shades can disguise blood, and sometimes there is a lot of it on the battlefield. Why don't bulls like red? Does he scare them, irritate them? Will they react so strongly to blue or e.g. green color? In fact, this is not a matter of psychology or physiology; animals don’t care: they only react to movements when they feel that something might threaten them.
Color doesn't matter
The color is what viewers pay more attention to than the bull. Firstly, richly embroidered costumes and red capes are considered an important part of the culture and tradition of bullfighting. Just as sports teams always wear the same colors, scarlet capes are seen as part of the bullfighting uniform, not because bulls don't like red. The reasons are also practical. Bullfighting is one of the most popular and controversial customs in Spain. Often this exciting action ends with the death of the bull, and the red color, although not much, masks the already cruel performance.
The bull attacks the one who moves
Question "Why do bulls react to the color red?" is not entirely correct, since they do not distinguish this color, and also green, at all. Movement makes them angry. Moreover, the bulls participating in bullfighting come from a very aggressive breed (El Toro Bravo). They are selected in such a way that any sudden movements can infuriate them and force them to attack. Even if the cape is a calm sky blue color, the bull will still attack if it is waved in front of his nose. Therefore, if a matador is dressed in red and stands still, and another matador is dressed in any other color (even white) and begins to move, the bull will attack the one in white (the one who is moving).
"Like a bull on a red rag"
Many people still believe that as soon as a bull sees something red, his eyes will immediately begin to become bloodshot, he will begin to breathe heavily and scratch the ground with his hoof, and then, worst of all, powerful beast will rush headlong towards the one who annoys him. There is even a saying: about someone who quickly becomes angry, they say that he reacts like a bull to a red rag. However, this is nothing more than a misunderstanding.
It doesn’t matter what color the rag is: if you move it and the bull notices it, then at first he will simply be wary, but if you start waving it in all directions, then expect trouble. This is a common defensive reaction. The animal perceives movement as a threat, and has no choice but to defend itself. By the way, if you wave a white cloth, the effect can be even more noticeable, since this color is brighter than red and the bull will see it faster.
Bullfighting is a magnificent, exciting spectacle, like a pagan dance, so religious and at the same time aggressive, filled with beauty and grace, but cruel and bloody. Thousands of people freeze in anticipation of the amazing action and their hearts begin to beat in the same rhythm - after all, the culmination of this performance is death.
Here two rivals appear in the arena - a man and a bull. Another second, and a dangerous duel should begin between a beautiful, powerful, brave and proud animal, symbolizing primitive instincts, life’s difficulties, adversities and all that is dark in life, and a bullfighter, dressed in a magnificent snow-white “suit” reflecting the rays of the sun Sveta".
All spectators watch with bated breath a dangerous mortal duel of two symbolic forces - darkness and light, where a man skillfully dodges the blows of a bull with the help of a bright red muleta (a piece of fabric attached to a stick), which provokes the bull and hides the silhouette of the matador, and the inevitable culmination will be the victory of the magnificent bullfighter and the death of the bull.
Bullfight spectators are convinced that it is the red color that drives the bull into an uncontrollable rage and nothing can convince them of this - such are the traditions. But every bullfighter knows that bulls are colorblind by nature and do not distinguish colors, and the red muleta is just a tribute to tradition and a way to capture the attention of the stands excited by this magnificent spectacle.
The mammalian eye consists of two types of photoreceptors - cones, which allow us to distinguish colors, and rods, which allow us to see the size and shape of objects. In humans and primates, the number of cones in the retina of the eye is very large, which allows them to distinguish colors. But the colors in the life of ungulates of great importance do not have, and Mother Nature deprived the eyes of these animals, as an unnecessary element for them, of the number of cones that allow them to distinguish colors.
Why does a bull in a bullfight still rush at a red muleta? The thing is that for bullfighting they raise special bulls of the El Toro Bravo breed (translated as “the brave bull”), which are especially aggressive, angry, agile, but are not particularly intelligent, stupid and therefore predictable in a duel with a bullfighter, which very important.
And then comes the climax - in the arena, a clever matador plays the last deadly game with an angry bull with the help of a red muleta, which with its movement drives the bull into an indescribable rage. The viewer freezes, watching every movement of the scarlet muleta, which is visible even in the last rows of the amphitheater. The flickering of red matter and the fury of the animal lead the viewer into indescribable delight - they long for the climax of the action, the viewer is waiting for the blood that is about to spill!
The red color of the material on the mulet is just a clever trick that brings the crowd of spectators into such ecstasy, making the spectacle bright and memorable. And the bull doesn’t care at all what color the muleta is - blue, red, yellow or white - he still doesn’t distinguish colors, and is only annoyed by the frantic movement of matter and the insane howl of the stands intoxicated by the bloody spectacle.