Abstract
IN the experiments on “Comparative Palatability,” recorded in NATURE of November 19 (p. 53), Mr. E. B. Titchener refers to the unpalatability of the brimstone butterfly. The insect was “fairly seized several times,” but “was always rejected,” by a frog. Some of your readers may not be aware that Mr. F. Gowland Hopkins, of Guy's Hospital, has recently shown that the yellow pigment of this butterfly, and of several others of its allies, is due to a substance formed as a urinary pigment; it is also known that the colours of other butterflies, and other animals, bear a relation to the urinary pigments. These substances may be in many cases of a disagreeable flavour. Dr. Eisig, of the Naples Zoological Station, has suggested that if intense and varied coloration is primarily due to a great quantity and variety of such bitter-tasting pigments, we do not need to assume that the brilliant coloration has been brought about in order to advertise the nauseous taste. The bright and varied colour will be, in fact, a consequence of the deposition in the integument of bitter pigments. This view—which has for the most part escaped the attention of those who have written upon animal colours, owing doubtless to its having been put forward in a special monograph upon a group of worms (Capitellidœ)—better explains how it is that brightly-coloured unpalatable creatures are in so many (? the majority of) cases tasted before being refused. I have laid some stress upon this view of warning coloration in a forthcoming book upon “Animal Coloration,” which is to be published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co.
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BEDDARD, F. Warning Colours. Nature 45, 78 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/045078a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045078a0
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