Wells Deborah L, McDonald Claire L, Ringland Janice E
School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
J Comp Psychol. 2008 May;122(2):213-9. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.122.2.213.
Color plays an important biological role in the lives of many animals, with some species exhibiting preferences for certain colors over others. This study explored the color preferences of two species of ape, which, like humans, possess trichromatic color vision. Six western lowland gorillas, and six chimpanzees, housed in Belfast Zoological Gardens, were exposed to three stimuli (cloths, boxes, sheets of acetate) in red, blue, and green. Six stimuli of the same nature, in each of the three colors, were provided to both species for 5 days per stimulus. The amount of interest that the animals showed toward each stimulus of each color was recorded for 1 hr. Results showed that the apes, both when analyzed as two separate groups, and when assessed collectively, showed significant color preferences, paying significantly less attention to the red-, than to the blue- or green-colored stimuli. The animals' interest in the blue- and green-colored stimuli did not differ significantly. Overall, the findings suggest that gorillas and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, may harbor color preferences comparable to those of humans and other species.
颜色在许多动物的生命中起着重要的生物学作用，一些物种对某些颜色表现出偏好。本研究探讨了两种猿类的颜色偏好，这两种猿类与人类一样，具有三色视觉。饲养在贝尔法斯特动物园的六只西部低地大猩猩和六只黑猩猩，接触了红色、蓝色和绿色的三种刺激物（布料、盒子、醋酸酯片）。为这两个物种提供了每种颜色的六种相同性质的刺激物，每种刺激物持续5天。记录动物对每种颜色的每种刺激物表现出的兴趣量，持续1小时。结果表明，无论是将猿类作为两个独立的群体进行分析，还是进行总体评估，它们都表现出显著的颜色偏好，对红色刺激物的关注明显少于对蓝色或绿色刺激物的关注。动物对蓝色和绿色刺激物的兴趣没有显著差异。总体而言，研究结果表明，大猩猩和黑猩猩，我们现存的近亲，可能具有与人类和其他物种相当的颜色偏好。
