Fresh perspective on camouflage for free-ranging chickens

[Vulpes vulpes]

I had to look it up…the extinction of dinosaurs is the explosion of mammalian diversity though mammals were not nocturnal to begin with. Those visual traits evolved along with ectothermia as a means of avoiding cold-blooded reptiles. So it is an actual bottleneck. That’s my curiosity sorted

Interesting facet to point out, though, is that to our knowledge most dinosaurs were probably warm blooded. I believe it's more that being diurnal is generally more advantageous (milder temps, easier to see) so it's sort of the default. The main reason to become nocturnal is to escape predators/competition(like, say, massive reptiles running around) or to prey on the former (see: owls and bats). By the time that dinosaurs were becoming the dominant lineage, mammals were probably already nocturnal to avoid competition with their fellow synapsids. So while the first animals we'd call mammals were nocturnal, they were simply the only surviving lineage of a much larger group that was probably mostly diurnal. So technically a bottleneck

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Interesting facet to point out, though, is that to our knowledge most dinosaurs were probably warm blooded.

It’s funny. I did some research and field work on fossil site from the upper Triassic as an undergrad but I learned almost nothing about the fossilized creatures from the site. I’m not sure I ever saw them with my own eyes.

The therapods that were dominant at that time filled a niche that was quite rapidly taken over by dinosaurs and at the time (I don’t know where the science is on this now) scientists were trying to piece out exactly what the dinosaurs had that the therapods didn’t. Everyone else working on this site had a PhD and I hadn’t even finished my bachelor’s but it was amazing because they could tell you how the circulatory system of a crocodylomorph (Triassic crocodile ancestor) worked and the skeletal differences between dinosaurs and therapods. But I never absorbed a lick of it because the sedimentology of it was more than enough to keep me busy. I am sure paleontologists have learned a lot since then and there is probably a pretty rigid hypothesis about what exactly happened at that boundary. Now that I am far removed from all that it might be kind of fun to follow the dinosaur-chicken evolutionary line and see how velociraptors turned into Orpingtons (joking because I am not even sure they’re remotely related it just seems likely).

If you can get an idea of how a hawk sees, can you also get an idea of how a chicken sees?

 

[Vulpes vulpes]

If you can get an idea of how a hawk sees, can you also get an idea of how a chicken sees?

In terms of color vision, I believe that all birds are mostly the same, maybe save for nocturnal birds like owls and kiwis (though I haven't done any research into that). Sensitivity to different colors might vary, but chickens and hawks have the same four cones, so they both see the same colors. Visual acuity is probably quite different, since hawks can see insane detail at insane distances. Some birds, including pigeons, can detect polarized light, which allows them to "see" the earth's magnetic field and navigate great distances, but that isn't really a color.

An interesting thing is that aside from ratites, members of the Galloansarae (pheasants, chickens, turkey, waterfowl, etc) are the most basal group of birds alive today. Since hawks belong to Neoaves, which contains 95% of living bird species, there is no living bird aside from ratites that's less related to hawks