3/19/2004: Silver Langurs

These silver langurs are protected species around Indonesia and northern India. They're noted for two things: one, their tremendously pissed-off look accented by hair somewhere between spikes and mohawk; two, the babies come out ORANGE and take three months to turn the darker color.

You'd think it would be a bad idea for a species to highlight their young with a bright color, but it turns out that they have an interesting tribal behavior. They live in groups between 10 and 60, and all the females in the group take care of all the young in the group. So I suppose the color helps tell them what they should be mothering.

When I bought a winter coat for my 2 year old daughter, I chose a bright solid red one. She's much less likely to be hit by a car or get lost in a crowd.

Children should be seen,.....constantly.

The lippizaner horses which are white are either born black or grey

Re: 3/19/2004: Silver Langurs

Don't ask me how I know this, but there is a breed of rabbit that is born jet black and as it matures it turns silver. Often times you can tell approx how old the rabbit is based on how silver its color is.

For some reason I always thought it was real cool when an animal is born a totally different color then its going to end up. Kinda like mother natures way of sticking her tongue out at everyone and saying "I can do any thing I please".

My first thought was "I wonder if he looks like the Mail-monkey."

Well you know it also exists that humans change color, like Micheal Jackson

ha ha ha very funny Pi.

I read about a study performed in Africa which demonstrated that if one of the animals in a herd were painted so as to look different from all the others, it was a guarantee that a predator would seek it out over all the other members of the herd. The author of the study was seeking to explain herding behaviour and, apparently, its chief benefit is to confuse prey when all members of a herd bolt in a different direction when a predator approaches.

The predator, however, would never veer from the painted animal and the odds of a kill increased greatly as a result of the increased focus of the predator (on the lone different prey).

Re: Re: 3/19/2004: Silver Langurs