Buzz
Unfortunately, it's not just your mom who's scrutinizing your outfit. A recent study published in PLOS One shows that wild animals, specifically lizards, behave differently toward humans based on the color of their clothing.
This behavior makes sense when you consider the role color plays in the animal world—whether it's for finding food, escaping danger, or attracting a mate, color holds vital survival information.
Earlier research has revealed that birds with orange or red feathers are less wary of humans dressed in similar hues. Could other colorful creatures show the same reaction?
To explore this, evolutionary biologist Breanna Putman focused on a particular species of lizard. The western fence lizard, native to the deserts of the western United States, exhibits a variety of colors. While both males and females are generally brown or black, the males stand out with bright blue patches on their bellies and throats, and some even have sparkling blue spots on their backs. When confronted, males perform push-ups to accentuate their blue scales and appear even more striking. Blue, it seems, was the key color.
Putman ventured to two prime lizard observation locations, one in a public park in Los Angeles and the other in a nearby nature reserve. Previous bird studies had only compared people in orange and red with those in dark gray, which left the possibility that the birds might respond positively to any bright color. So Putman brought four different t-shirts: dark blue, light blue, bright red, and gray. The dark blue shirt closely resembled the color of the male lizards' dominant blue patches.
In each trial, Putman donned one of the shirts and attempted to approach a lizard. Initially, she simply walked toward them casually. After a few weeks, she changed her approach and tried to catch them. For each trial, she measured the distance the lizard allowed her to get, as well as how quickly and how far it ran away.
Sure enough, the dark-blue shirt seemed to have a calming effect on the lizards, or at least made them more tolerant compared to the other shirts. When wearing their favorite color, Putman was able to get twice as close to the lizards (39 inches versus 78 inches) compared to other colors. The lizards also made fewer attempts to flee. In red, light blue, or gray, Putman succeeded in capturing a lizard 40 percent of the time, but in dark blue, that success rate increased to 84 percent.
These results serve as a valuable reminder to animal researchers, Putman said in a statement. "What we wear can have indirect effects on animals through changes in their behavior."
