Contrary to what you think, bulls are not attracted to the color red. This false belief has spread with the bullfightthe traditional Spanish show in which we witness the bloody fight between the matador and the bull. It’s true: the animal furiously attacks the red cloth – la muleta – which is waved in front of him, but he doesn’t do it for the color. These animals, in fact, are dichromatic: They don’t see colors like us. What triggers their “anger” are the movements of the bullfighters and the cloaks they use. As proof of this, the bulls also attack the soft topa coat that is magenta on one side and yellow on the other.
To understand why, we need to look inside the eye. The “sensors” of vision, special called photoreceptors, are located in the retina cones And rods. It is they who, through biochemical processes, transform light into nervous impulses sent to the brain. THE rods they deal with night and black and white vision, while i cones they are essential for seeing colors. We human beings (that we are trichromatic) we have 3 types of cones, each sensitive to a different wavelength: the cones L (Long) sensitive to red (~560 nm); the cones M (Medium) sensitive to green (~530 nm) and cones S (Short) sensitive to blue (~430 nm). The signals generated by these three receptors are mixed by the brain to create the entire color range we know. It’s the same principle as coloring RGB (Red-Green-Blue): if we see “pure yellow”, it is because the L (red) and M (green) cones are activating at the same time.
However, most mammals (excluding some primates like us) are dichromatic. The bulls, specifically, they do not have cones for the long wavelength (red)but they only have ones for green and blue. For comparison, they see the world as a person suffering from color blindness for the color red, protanopia. Their eyes do not distinguish clearly between red and green and the matador’s coat appears a similar color to a grey-yellow.
What then triggers the fury of the bulls? It’s the movement. The step of the veronica and the rapid and twirling gestures of the cape activate an instinctive defensive reaction in the bull. Furthermore, it must be considered that bulls of the breed are specifically selected for bullfighting Toro Bravo de Lidiabred for centuries for their powerful muscles and their natural aggressiveness.
If we analyze the progress of the bullfight, we also note that the famous muleta red is used only in the last phase (third of muleta), when the bull is already exhausted and about to be killed. This color was chosen for tradition and practicality as it is mainly used to mask blood spatter of the animal. In the initial phase (third of varas), The matador hey peons – bullfighters on foot – instead use the brega hood (magenta and yellow), and the bull charges that coat with the same intensity, confirming that color has nothing to do with it.
The program also took care of definitively dispelling the myth in 2007 MythBustersdemonstrating that the bull only reacts to movement. During their tests, the animal charged fixed flags and mannequins of any color (white, blue and red) without preferences. Curiously, the red dummy was even the last to be hit. The final test saw a person dressed in red stand still in the arena while other figures moved around: the bull gave chase only people on the movecompletely ignoring the still red figure.
