世界各地的鸟类爱好者们大都对这些拥有着五颜六色羽毛的动物十分着迷，但根据最近的研究发现，这些鸟儿们其实可能并不会在意自己的色彩如何。

据国外媒体报道，科学家们认为，鸟儿们之所以不会特别重视自己羽毛的颜色，是因为它们完全无法解释颜色的概念——尽管有观点认为，鸟类对于紫外线色调的感知要超过人类的大脑。研究者认为鸟类眼中的世界同人类是不一样的，“色彩空间”对他们的意义并不包括自己身上羽毛的图案是如何的。

鸟儿们可能并不会在意自己的色彩如何

该项目的首席研究员玛丽-卡斯维尔-斯托达(Mary Caswell Stoddard)表示，鸟类是地球上最丰富多彩的生物体之一，对于人类的研究鸟类似乎拥有几乎可以想象到的所有色彩，但鸟儿们看到的世界与我们是截然不同的。该项研究的结果已发表在《行为生态学》期刊(the journal Behavioural Ecology)中。

玛丽和在美国工作的剑桥科学家同事们研究了诸多鸟类的颜色和它们眼中其它鸟类的状况，他们发现大部分鸟类的羽毛在其它鸟儿眼中，就像打印出的报纸一般只是一种色彩子集。需要思考的是为什么羽毛的颜色只限于这一个子集，而其它外色域的颜色则不在其中，这或许是对它们不利的。

但这不意味着鸟类的颜色不会最终演变扩大出新的颜色。研究报告的合著者，耶鲁大学的理查德-普鲁姆(Richard Prum)博士表示，新颜色的形成演化和创新能使鸟类的色彩空间踏入新领域，人类的服装在紫红色苯胺染料发明前也是比较单调的，但化学发明让衣服的颜色变得更加多样化。

原文出处：

Behavioural Ecology    doi: 10.1093/beheco/arr088

How colorful are birds? Evolution of the avian plumage color gamut

Mary Caswell Stoddard and Richard O. Prum

The avian plumage color gamut is the complete range of plumage colors, as seen by birds themselves. We used a tetrahedral avian color stimulus space to estimate the avian plumage color gamut from a taxonomically diverse sample of 965 plumage patches from 111 avian species. Our sample represented all known types of plumage coloration mechanisms. The diversity of avian plumage colors occupies only a portion (26–30%, using violet-sensitive and ultraviolet-sensitive models, respectively) of the total available avian color space, which represents all colors birds can theoretically see and discriminate. For comparison, we also analyzed 2350 plant colors, including an expansive set of flowers. Bird plumages have evolved away from brown bark and green leaf backgrounds and have achieved some striking colors unattainable by flowers. Feather colors form discrete hue “continents,” leaving vast regions of avian color space unoccupied. We explore several possibilities for these unoccupied hue regions. Some plumage colors may be difficult or impossible to make (constrained by physiological and physical mechanisms), whereas others may be disadvantageous or unattractive (constrained by natural and sexual selection). The plumage gamut of early lineages of living birds was probably small and dominated by melanin-based colors. Over evolutionary time, novel coloration mechanisms allowed plumages to colonize unexplored regions of color space. Pigmentary innovations evolved to broaden the gamut of possible communication signals. Furthermore, the independent origins of structural coloration in many lineages enabled evolutionary expansions into places unreachable by pigmentary mechanisms alone.