Seven Deadly Colours

by Andrew Parker

With vivid and fascinating examples of how colour has affected animals in different environments across the globe, Seven Deadly Colours not only shows the endless wonder of the natural world but also extends our understanding of evolution itself. The second volume of Parker's trilogy on the topic, this one shows how colour perception - or lack of it - has guided the track of natural selection. There are many hidden facets to vision and perception. We tend to think we can see everything, but in fact, our visual acuity has serious limitations. Other creatures, such as bees, see in the ultraviolet range. Many ocean fish have colour limitations due to their habitat, particularly those in deep water. Parker describes how these abilities evolved by using seven - well, eight, actually - commonly detected colours. Parker explains how eyes are structured. Certain types have differing colour detection abilities. Within the eye are organelles known as "rods" and "cones". The rods are the light intensity detectors, while the cones are colour selectors. As he explains, light is meaningless until the signals reach the brain where they are decoded. Eye and brain are thus closely linked, the arrangement having evolved with each species over time. Changes in habitat are reflected in changes in visual abilities. Some colours seem straightforward and unambiguous, like leaves or fruit. Others, however, are generated by pattern or movement. Moth and bird wings have delicate shifts of colour from rest state to flapping, for example. Birds and many insects have evolved superior colour perception as a result. Not all colour is simply variations of reflectivity. Some creatures produce light. Parker's chapter on "Blue" takes us through the realm of "bioluminscence".

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Evolution, Natural History, Science Nature, Biology, History

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Andrew Parker is a zoologist who has worked on Biomimetics. He worked at the Natural History Museum in London, and from 1990 to 1999 he was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and is a Research Associate of the Australian Museum and University of Sydney and from 1999 until 2005 he worked at the University of Oxford. As of 2018 Parker is a Visiting Research Fellow at Green Templeton College where he is head of a Research Team into photonic structures and eyes.

Reviews

[Sula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, showing that colours in an animals are not as simple as we might think and that behind the scenes there is more than meets the eye! In doing this, he shows how the eye is not perfect as Darwin believed and therefore not too accomplished to have evolved.

A mix of zoology and the physics of light, this book explores ways of creating colours in animals – it’s the more technical descriptions of the interaction of light and particles that makes me recommend it as much to people interested in particle physics as to those interested in natural history. However, the book has been written in a way that if you wish to skip over the technical details of this it can be done. Each chapter poses a question about a colour in an animal and while looking at a variety of animals on the way introduces a new way to create colour in animals.

While he states this is the second in the trilogy, the first being In The Blink Of An Eye: How Vision Sparked The Big Bang Of Evolution, it’s definitely readable as a standalone (I’m not sure if the third book has ever been written though).

[Allie Ford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author explores different ways that colour is produced, and sometimes interpreted in the animal kingdom as a framework for discussing aspects of biology, chemistry and physics.

As someone with a spectroscopy background a lot of this book was things I already knew, and it's difficult to identify how this would read to a non-scientist. The author uses the concept of a nano-cam - a hypothetical tiny device that can insert itself into microscopic or molecular interactions to identify what is happening at small scales. Each chapter, based on one colour from the spectrum, skips between nano-cam descriptions of the science, and broader explanations of how different animals create, use and perceive colour. The book makes heavy references to the author's other publications, which gets a bit annoying in places. Being 15 years old, some of the science is quite dated now, although it was cutting edge at the time - it's interesting to see how far we've moved along! The author's main concept is to disprove the idea, first put forward by Darwin, that the eye is a perfect organ. He hammers it home perhaps a little too much as I found it got tedious by the end.

For a book about colour and perception, there's very limited photos, which is a shame as more images (both photos and diagrams) would really have brought some of the ideas to life. I did very much enjoy the last chapter, about different octopuses and their camouflage techniques. Other chapters were a bit more hit and miss.
For someone with less background in this area, this would probably be quite an accessible book.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

So here is my confession for dense, popular science books like this. I find them fascinating; I truly do. But I always try to read them at night, and I always fall asleep.

Which is why I didn't quite make it to the end of this one before my loan ran out, and I will never know why it is that the orange, black, and white milk snakes can appear green while in motion.

But I do know considerably more about the color ultraviolet than I ever did before.

[Ola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book, albeit slightly technical (but those bits can be skipped without harming your understanding of the content). Makes you marvel at the role of colour in Allah's creation (ignore the Darwinian perspective). And most amazing of all is that Indigo is not actually considered a colour in the rainbow by scientists anymore!!!!

[Bradford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some amazing examples of really really cool (animal) biotechnology. I found certain aspects of the presentation (nanocam) quite gimicky.