No bull，lizards flee when they see red

By Sean Paul

导读:一项研究发现，相对于蓝色，蜥蜴会对红色更敏感。

You wouldn’tthink studyinglizardsisa particularly dangerous profession.Until,that is,sheriffs approach you with their guns drawn.“We get the cops called on us sometimes.”

Bree Putman,a behavioral ecologist at U.C.L.A.and the NaturalHistory Museum ofLosAngeles.Her colleague at the museum,Greg Pauly,really did end up on the wrong side of a gun once,and here’s why:

“A lot of times we’re doing work at night in people’s neighborhoods and we’re using flashlights to look for geckos on the sides of people’s houses.And so sometimes people willthink we’re criminals or burglars or something.”

The museum’s solution was neon orange shirts with the museum logo.And we call these shirts the “don’t shoot me”shirts.But the bright orange left Putman with a concern:that the color would spook the very animals they were trying to study.

So she devised an experiment.“I basically designed a study to show to the museum staff that these shirts were

not going to be good for research,and that’s what I found.”

你也许认为研究蜥蜴不会是一个危险的职业，直到警察拔出枪指着你的时候。“我们有时会被警察传讯。”

布里·普特曼是一名行为生态学家，目前在加州大学洛杉矶分校和洛杉矶自然历史博物馆工作。她在博物馆的同事格雷格·保利确实有过一次被误伤的下场，原因如下：

“我们晚上经常会在小区里工作，用手电筒在人们房屋的四周寻找壁虎。所以有的时候人们会以为我们是罪犯或是小偷什么的。”

博物馆的对策就是让我们穿上带有博物馆标志的橙色衬衫。我们把这个衬衣叫作“别对我开枪”衬衫。但是鲜艳的橙色让布里有点担心：衬衣的颜色可能会把他们想研究的动物吓跑。

于是她设计了一个实验：“我就是想通过这个实验向博物馆的工作人员证明这个衬衫对研究没有益处，这就是我的发现。”

In her trials,Putman wore tank tops of various colors—red,gray,lightblue,dark blue—and then attempted to approach and capture western fence lizards in public and private parkland in L.A.And she found that when wearing dark blue,she could get twice as close to the lizards,compared to when she wore red.And she was about twice as likely to catch a lizard too,while wearing dark or light blue,compared to red or gray.The study appears in the journal PLOS ONE.

Putman thinks that the lizards may be more tolerant of blue hues,because they most closely resemble the blue patches males have on their bellies—a sexual signal.Other studies have shown that birds with orange and red plumage are similarly less creeped out by orange and red shirts.She’s not ready to issue a dress code to hikers just yet.

“You know for a scientist or biologist working with wild animals,you want to make sure either that you’re wearing the same outfit every time you’re going to do animal behavior.Or you want to randomize what you wear.”

As for those museum shirts,I actually wear the orange shirt.I don’t wear a blue shirt.Because studying wildlife in urban areas,you never know when you might encounter that other species:gun-toting Homo sapiens.

测验时，普特曼分别穿上红色、灰色、浅蓝、深蓝四种不同颜色的背心,然后开始试着在洛杉矶私人或公共的公园捕捉西方强棱蜥。然后她发现与穿红色衣服相比，穿深蓝色衣服时，她与那些蜥蜴的距离能拉近两倍。而且相对于穿红色或灰色衣服，穿浅蓝或者深蓝背心的时候，会有两倍的概率能抓住那些蜥蜴。这一研究发表在PLOS ONE杂志上面。

普特曼认为蜥蜴也许更适应蓝色调，因为这种色调最接近雄性发出求爱信号时腹部出现的蓝色斑块。另外还有研究显示，有橙色或红色羽毛的鸟类也更不容易被橙色和红色衬衫吓到。但她还没准备好为徒步旅行者建议着装要求。

“对于一个研究野生动物的科学家或者生物学家来说，你想确定你是每次研究动物行为时都穿同一件衣服，还是想随机选择衣着。”

我事实上还是会穿博物馆的橙色衬衫，而不是蓝色衬衫。因为在城市研究野生动物时，你永远不知道会不会遇到其他更危险的生物，比如持枪的人类。