Hypothesis...

[Wewt]

Hey!

I've noticed something strange and would like to conduct an experiment.

When my tortoise wanders my house he doesn't pay any attention to walls that are coloured... but to my white cabinets he will pace and pace and act like he is trying to walk through them.

My hypothesis:

Tortoises (esp. Sulcata) cannot comprehend the colour white since it doesn't exist naturally in their habitat, and so determine that there is nothing there.

How to test:

Grab something that is white and long and place it against a wall and see if they react differently to it than other walls. Perhaps put them on your bathroom floor and see if they pay more attention to the bathtub than they should.

Anyways, let me know what you think or if you have similar experiences! Needless to say, white cabinets are not the answer in my house.

 

[N2TORTS]

Your experiment is interesting. Some factors include not just the color “ white” is non existent ( your right …sort-of) in the natural world . One thing to consider in a simple “boxed” type environment , solid white walls will reflect much more light than darker colors and or white walls with a pattern. Reptiles have sensitive eyes which links the brain with psychological attachments or color memories that can imperceptibly alter natural emotional responses, moods or habits.
Anytime a shade of color is taken to its brightest hue possible, the effect will be stimulating, simply because the visual jolt of anything bright causes the eye to physically react in a much more aggressive manner. Another version of this type of eye-brain response has been done with enclosures with right angle walls vs. a round “ stadium like” enclosure with no corners. The response from the animals was obvious from the get go and even more extreme effects such as eating and sleeping routines took place well into the experiment.

Keep us updated on your info .....

JD~

 

[wellington]

My leopard seems to go for white things, but too eat. If its white, he is going to try and eat it. In fact, I have white, pink and purple rose of Sharon. He will eat the white ones, won't touch the pink and purple ones. He has never been interested in the color red either like most torts seem to be. However, he shows great interest in my orange toe nails but not my bright almost baby blue finger nails.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

I bathe all 5 of my leopard tortoises in white dish tubs. They also eat Mazuri mixed breakfasts in these tubs. I have seen no difference in behavior compared to when I used blue, orange and black tubs.

Sent from my TFOapp

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Pure white does exist naturally, drive in fog and tell me otherwise. Sooooo, maybe the tort just thinks it is walking in an early morning mist over a seasonal swamp in Africa.

Will

 

[kensie]

Interesting theory... My baby sully absolutely goes nuts if i have him in my tub to bathe him (he tries to eat the walls) so I've had to start soaking him in a dark colored bin and he pays no attention to the bin now. But then I have a five year old sully who I adopted this year and he doesn't care about the white tub at all...


Love my sullys ( Blair- almost a year and squirtle- about five )

 

[Wewt]

Very interesting information, everyone! Sounds like it's just the tortoise's colour preferences rather than a species-wide phenomenon.

Pure white does exist naturally, drive in fog and tell me otherwise. Sooooo, maybe the tort just thinks it is walking in an early morning mist over a seasonal swamp in Africa.

Will

Agreed, but solid white- as in my kitchen cabinets- wouldn't exist. Unless there is a big bleached rock, which I suppose happens.

Expanding on your fog theory, perhaps he DOES think it's a fog and keeps trying to walk through it to get to the other side. Hmm.

Regardless, last time I have white cabinets. They're all chipped from him walking into them.

 

[N2TORTS]

Pure white does exist naturally, drive in fog and tell me otherwise. Sooooo, maybe the tort just thinks it is walking in an early morning mist over a seasonal swamp in Africa.

Will

Actually ................Is white really a color ? It depends who you ask….in the art world “white” is the absence of color , while in the scientific field “white” is the presence of all colors because of the light bouncing off it . ….

We see only the reflected rays, which determine the color we perceive. A red berry extracts green and blue from white sunlight; a yellow flower absorbs blue and red.

The pigments in flowers, animal skins and paintings derive their colors by absorbing light. But not all color is generated this way. The rainbow's variegated arc is not the result of light absorption by the raindrops, but of refraction: reflection of rays of different wavelengths at differing angles. This is an example of light 'scattering'. The sky is blue because blue light is scattered by molecules and dust in the atmosphere more strongly than red light: the blue rays from the sun bounce towards our eyes from all directions. Distant hills are blue-tinted for the same reason: the light reflected from the hills is augmented by blue from the atmosphere before reaching our eyes.
Some animal and plant colors are caused by light scattering. The blues on butterfly wings, for example, are produced by the microscopically ribbed surface of the tiny wing scales, the ridges spaced at just the right separation to reflect blue light but not red. The color of this scattered light can vary depending on which angle you view it from, giving rise to the iridescence of insect cuticle and the shimmering colors of a peacock's tail.
Newton is often credited with 'explaining' (in John Keats' derogatory phrase, 'unweaving') the rainbow. But that is not quite what he did. Philosophers had known for centuries that light passing through glass, transparent minerals or water can generate a multitude of colors. The ancient Greeks speculated that rainbows are caused by sunbeams falling onto clouds, and in 1637 the French philosopher René Descartes showed that sunlight becomes focused into a circular arc when it bounces off raindrops.
It was Newton, however, who brought color to Descartes' rainbow. In1665 he split sunlight into the many-hued spectrum by passing it through a prism in a darkened room. He found that the individual colors could not be split further by a second prism. And if all the spectral colors were brought back together using a lens, they merged into a beam of white light. Newton deduced that the rays of different colors were being bent through different angles by the prism-and that the same thing happens in rainbows, where each raindrop acts like a tiny prism



Check More here:

http://philipball.co.uk/index.php?o...our-natural-history&catid=16:colour&Itemid=18

 

[Wewt]

This thread wreaks of intelligence beyond my understanding.

I had to read your post two or three times before I grasped it completely. Really, really interesting read, N2TORTS! I had no idea that insects and what-not used light and colour in that way.

On a slightly related note, have you heard of deep ocean fish using red light projectors in order to see their prey? The colour red doesn't exist that deep so other fish don't see the red light, but the predator can see them through his awesome red headlights. Super cool. Animals are awesome.

 

[N2TORTS]

Wewt ....Oh yes ….the deep sea dwellers are amazing …Lucky I have seen some of that in action . Ever herd of Scripps Institute of Oceanography?
Anyhow … here another prime example … “Nature and White”

And we all know the moon is not really white ..Or made of cheese..




Moon Over Yellowstone
Photograph by Joel Sartore

 

[Wewt]

Wewt ....Oh yes ….the deep sea dwellers are amazing …Lucky I have seen some of that in action . Ever herd of Scripps Institute of Oceanography?
Anyhow … here another prime example … “Nature and White”

And we all know the moon is not really white ..Or made of cheese..




Moon Over Yellowstone
Photograph by Joel Sartore

Whaaaaat? I am so jealous! All I get are documentaries. Although, it's pretty awesome that those things are available to everyone. My favourite are the octopi who can change form and colour and texture... they are going to take over the world some day, I'm sure.

Okay, the moon is white, but I don't know if tortoises can see more than a few meters ahead of them. Try it out- put a carrot in front of your tortoise's face and move it back quickly. With my tortoise, there is a two foot vicinity where he sees the carrot and chases, but any further he kind of looks around like it's vanished into thin air.

Besides, if sulcatas spend their nights burrowed-- will they ever see the moon?

 

[Teodora'sDAD]

My leopard seems to go for white things, but too eat. If its white, he is going to try and eat it. In fact, I have white, pink and purple rose of Sharon. He will eat the white ones, won't touch the pink and purple ones. He has never been interested in the color red either like most torts seem to be. However, he shows great interest in my orange toe nails but not my bright almost baby blue finger nails.

I just thought it was interesting that one would have bright orange toenails and baby blue finger nails... lol (just playin)

 

[N2TORTS]

My leopard seems to go for white things, but too eat. If its white, he is going to try and eat it. In fact, I have white, pink and purple rose of Sharon. He will eat the white ones, won't touch the pink and purple ones. He has never been interested in the color red either like most torts seem to be. However, he shows great interest in my orange toe nails but not my bright almost baby blue finger nails.

I just thought it was interesting that one would have bright orange toenails and baby blue finger nails... lol (just playin)

Ha Ha Dad ... I was thinking the same thing ... but then again .. We're talking about Barb ..

Wewt.....this was to follow up our talks about "the color white in nature" the moon pic was an example not for the torts, but for us humans. The Moon is perceived “white” to us .... Yet the moon’s geological structure is not even close to the color
“ white” . We are simply seeing the sun’s refraction off the moon ….so it appears white …same with the blue sky…

 

[Wewt]

My leopard seems to go for white things, but too eat. If its white, he is going to try and eat it. In fact, I have white, pink and purple rose of Sharon. He will eat the white ones, won't touch the pink and purple ones. He has never been interested in the color red either like most torts seem to be. However, he shows great interest in my orange toe nails but not my bright almost baby blue finger nails.

I just thought it was interesting that one would have bright orange toenails and baby blue finger nails... lol (just playin)

Ha Ha Dad ... I was thinking the same thing ... but then again .. We're talking about Barb ..

Wewt.....this was to follow up our talks about "the color white in nature" the moon pic was an example not for the torts, but for us humans. The Moon is perceived “white” to us .... Yet the moon’s geological structure is not even close to the color
“ white” . We are simply seeing the sun’s refraction off the moon ….so it appears white …same with the blue sky…

Haha, misunderstanding, then. I should have said, sulcata tortoises probably evolved never seeing white, and so they are confused by that "colour" now when they encounter it.

Someone up there said that his tortoise prefers white flowers, so if there are white flowers in their native habitats then my argument is mute.

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

All the fun ideas and physics of color not withstanding, color is what our brain tells us it is. Another way to put this forward is, color does not exist if we don't see it.

Any animals, humans included, will make what is seen conform to what we can make sense of. The tortoise does not know white is white, it is trying to make sense of a void of color. Often that means nothing is there.

Like the fog. It is not a pure white as a painter would see it, but is falls into the interpretation of void of color I.e. white.

Vision is as much what the brain does with the information, as what that information is.

Over time, the tortoise, as with other animals will figure out white is not a void of color (substance that inhibits forward movement), or it won't.

Similar to NHP's learning about glass.

Will

 

[N2TORTS]

right on .....
a great read on color and vision can be found here...
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/color-vision/

 

[Wewt]

All the fun ideas and physics of color not withstanding, color is what our brain tells us it is. Another way to put this forward is, color does not exist if we don't see it.

Any animals, humans included, will make what is seen conform to what we can make sense of. The tortoise does not know white is white, it is trying to make sense of a void of color. Often that means nothing is there.

Like the fog. It is not a pure white as a painter would see it, but is falls into the interpretation of void of color I.e. white.

Vision is as much what the brain does with the information, as what that information is.

Over time, the tortoise, as with other animals will figure out white is not a void of color (substance that inhibits forward movement), or it won't.

Similar to NHP's learning about glass.

Will

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! My tort tries to go through my white cupboards because he doesn't think anything is there. I figured as much. If you don't require knowing what white is during your evolutionary process, there probably isn't a part of your brain to tell you what white is.

My poor confused tort.

---

right on .....
a great read on color and vision can be found here...
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/color-vision/

Woah, that is more in depth than my third year Brain and Behaviour course in University.