I'm not sure this question even makes sense

[james_davis_nicoll]

But why are humans so drab compared to, say, birds? Is it just that mammals in general have lousy color vision (although ours is better than average) and that we're descended from animals that wouldn't have been able to make use of a wide variety of fur colors or is it that there's something about fur and hair that inherently limits its palette?

I will admit this ranks lower on my "inherent human features that require fixing" than the vitamin C thing, particularly given the existance of non-toxic dyes.

Comments

[trogon.livejournal.com]

Well, there are plenty of drab birds.

The colors available for fur are more limited than those for feathers, though; blue and green colors in feathers aren't actually due to pigment, but to the barbs of the feathers acting as a diffraction grating. (Green is usually but not always blue from diffration + yellow pigment.) Fur just doesn't have the sort of physical structure that can produce this effect.

I suspect mammals overall more or less run the gamut of available fur colors, and to be honest there aren't many fur colors that aren't represented in natural human hair colors.