ScienceDaily (June 23, 2011) — The brilliant colors of birds have inspired poets and nature lovers, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Cambridge say these existing hues represent only a fraction of what birds are capable of seeing.
The findings based on study of the avian visual system, reported in the June 23 issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology, show that over millions of years of evolution plumage colors went from dull to bright as birds gradually acquired the ability to create newer pigments and structural colors.
“Our clothes were pretty drab before the invention of aniline dyes, but then color became cheap and there was an explosion in the colorful clothes we wear today,” said Richard Prum, chair and the William Robertson Coe Professor in the Department of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author of the paper. “The same type of thing seemed to have happened with birds.”