Re: yellow and black


<louann_m@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1185887911.813911.239130@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jul 31, 7:37 am, prospero33 <conrad.gel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The question was, why are so many poisonous insects black or yellow?
Mullerian mimicry has nothing whatever to do with this question. Does
anyone have a useful speculation?

Do you mean, why is it the yellow/black color combination the one that
Mullerian mimicry happened to zero in on? Instead of, say, white and
purple?


Which came first, maybe? The yellow and black, or the aversion to yellow
and black? (Probably yellow and black were first - one needed to equate
"bad" with yellow and black before yellow and black became a combo to
fear...)
But, then again, there are other colors/patterns that sign "Don't Eat!"
than just yellow and black.
I am geting very tired of typing "yellow and black". I submit it be
shorthanded to "blewwo".


I don't know. I also don't know if that's been studied. It could be
semi-random -- any of several high-visibility color combinations would
have done the job but yellow/black was the one that was hit on first
and got all the reinforcement.

Parallel cases -- skunks being black and white against a brown forest
floor, poison-arrow frogs bright orange or blue against a green
background -- all seem to involve being extremely easy to spot. When
your life depends on getting a message across ("this color combination
means you DO NOT WANT to eat me") there's no point in whispering.




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