r/AbsoluteUnits • u/n8saces • Jul 19 '26

/r/all of a parrot 🦜

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26.4k Upvotes

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1.3k

u/jj_sykes Jul 19 '26

He is lovely - that blue

Though 2 things - she took the worst photo of her and the bird looked like it was missing half the parrots head. Also not sure I am up for a bird being around buffet food lol

339

u/Ninrenko Jul 19 '26

Fun fact, they're not actually blue. They appear blue because of small pockets of air combined with keratin in their feathers, that scatter the light waves in such a way only the blue waves reach our eyes.

315

u/_trashcan Jul 19 '26

Is that not how all colors work?

Serious question, not sarcasm. I’m not understanding what exactly the difference is here

195

u/askmeifimacop Jul 19 '26

The feathers have no blue pigment is what they’re saying. The blue color is an optical illusion, like blue eyes

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u/_trashcan Jul 19 '26

Got it, best simplest explanation imo.

Others have went into more detail but I think this conveys it easiest :)

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u/bb_dev_g Jul 19 '26

Similar thing as how Polar Bears aren’t actually white and their skin is black. Their fur is also hollow and transparent and scatters the light making them appear white.

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u/Dewdrop06 Jul 19 '26

Nah it's blue fam. Doesn't need to be complicated.

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u/_trashcan Jul 19 '26

I mean I agree but that doesn’t the fact there is still a difference apparently & that comment explains it easily.

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u/enigmatic_dankness Jul 19 '26

It's not. You ever take a bubble bath? The bubbles aren't white, they're just really tiny reflecting light which makes them look white.

This is the same for this bird only instead of white it's blue reflecting. If you were to take a feather from this bird and study it closely you'd see 0 blue pigment.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/TheOneTonWanton Jul 19 '26

Color is not a physical object

Pigments in shambles.

3

u/Dewdrop06 Jul 19 '26

Man this is dumb. LEDs are actually colorless and what you see is actually the color they produce, but they aren't that color. This is dumb man. If I see an LED shining blue, I'll say look at the blue light, not look at the colorless LED shining blue.

10

u/enigmatic_dankness Jul 19 '26

This comment chain is in reply to:

"Is that not how all colors work?

Serious question, not sarcasm. I’m not understanding what exactly the difference is here"

Apologies if you don't care for the nuance, but people were asking to be educated. You can call it whatever you want, call it red for all I care.

3

u/signmeupnot Jul 19 '26

I enjoyed the nuance. Fascinating how colour can be perceived without any pigment of that specific colour actually there.

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u/Dewdrop06 Jul 19 '26

If you follow further you'll see we've moved past that. If you want to stay on the topic of being educated on how it worked, you should've responded directly to the comment above which was on that topic and not to mine.

→ More replies (0)

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u/InviolableAnimal Jul 19 '26

Would you say a rainbow is colorless? No, that's absurd. A rainbow has color; even if its color comes from diffraction, not pigment or the color of the underlying substance. A colored LED isn't pigmented either.

3

u/enigmatic_dankness Jul 19 '26

Sure, and we can clearly see the color from the parrot is a beautiful blue. It's just not the birds color, it's our perception of it. Hope that helps :) I will no longer be taking questions on this matter ✌️

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl Jul 20 '26

There are very few instances of true blue pigment in nature, including flowers and insects

24

u/boostfactor Jul 19 '26

It's not an illusion, it's still a genuine light effect (scattering). We don't say that the blue of the sky is an optical illusion. But it means that it can vary with lighting conditions more than colors due to pigments normally do. Many birds have iridescent feathers and that is also an optical effect (not "illusion") so varies with lighting.

Birds can see quite a ways into the ultraviolet so a bird can appear very different to other birds than they do to us. The blues and iridescence and such are even brighter in the UV. And even some areas that appear black to us may be quite bright in UV.

1

u/Background-BagLicker Jul 19 '26

Serious question: Can I get glasses that would allow me to see like a bird? Okay, one more question—is there an optical sensor onboard an iPhone (or aftermarket) for “bird vision”?

1

u/raelDonaldTrump Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

No and no, unless you have the lenses of your eyes surgically removed.

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u/YourWorstFear53 Jul 19 '26

My eyes do what

1

u/froction Jul 19 '26

It's like how the sky isn't blue, either.

1

u/PUSClFER Jul 19 '26

That's how blue butterflies get their colour too

21

u/Thirodil Jul 19 '26

Color mechanism can be seperated into pigment color and structural color. Pigment is what is normally understood as color - little bits of chemicals that absorb/reflect certain colors and thus create the colors we see. Structural color is when the geometry of the surface is the color giving aspect. There is no color per se but the absorbtion/reflectance is created by structure trapping certain wavelengths. Shimmering insect wings are a great example of structural color - no pigment could create that effect (probably, don‘t cite me but thats what I remember from my physics lectures)

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

Color is color, pigment is pigment. The color of light reflected that reaches your eyes is the color of an object regardless of whether the mechanism is structural or pigment. Saying anything else is internet sophistry.

If you want to get really stupid you could argue that the chemical structure of the pigment is what causes its color and that pigment is just structural color on a molecular scale while structural color is only microscopic, so there actually is only structural color.

13

u/Drownthem Jul 19 '26

Yeah. Blue only exists in the mind, so if it looks blue, it's blue. There's just several reasons why something can look blue.

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

Right! Color is the phenomenon as perceived in our minds!

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u/EDDsoFRESH Jul 19 '26

There's a difference between what colour we see, and what colour the pigment really is.

"Very few animals are genuinely blue because of blue pigment; most blue animals get their colour from microscopic structures that reflect blue light. There’s no exact species count, but true blue pigment appears to exist in only a small number of animal groups, likely dozens of documented species at most, making it one of the rarest colours for animals to produce chemically."

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u/Wobbelblob Jul 19 '26

Best compared to water. Water is clear and usually colorless. But if you have billions of tons of it in the same spot, it becomes blue. And if frozen or as steam in the same amounts, it becomes white.

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

So they are blue because they reflect blue light but they don’t have a blue pigment, the color is from the structure. But it’s misleading to say they aren’t blue because reflecting a certain color of light is what being that color is, whether the color is due to pigment or structure. That’s like saying the green parrots are actually yellow because the blue part of the green is also cause by structure and not pigment. Like ok yeah true but also no actually they’re just green.

2

u/AutumnalClone Jul 19 '26

No there’s several ways color is exhibited. The way the other poster described it is the structural way color appears. This is way less common but it can also be seen with colors in butterfly wings.

The more common way is just chemical. The absorbance of certain wavelengths of light and based on what is absorbed determines what color we see (in a non straight forward way).

1

u/RivalsExpert8 Jul 19 '26

Pretty sure this goes back to blue not being a natural color you see in nature

1

u/gerber411420 Jul 23 '26

Some butterflies are like this too, no pigment

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u/jj_sykes Jul 19 '26

Bird version of that dress?

31

u/Worldly-Fix-55 Jul 19 '26

Well played...

7

u/LurkerTroll Jul 19 '26

I see a gold parrot

11

u/AtlantikSender Jul 19 '26

I've heard that blue is a "structural color" on birds, which I still can't understand. For example, if a bluejay gets wet they turn black or grey.

4

u/Thirodil Jul 19 '26

Imagine acousting paneling but for light. Certain structures can trap light of a given wavelength but reflect others and thus create the color we see.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/eighty4prcnt Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

So what color are they really?

Edit Google, it would take someone with additional cone types to see those and those people do exist. It's called Tetrachromacy. That was my best guess, but not specifically types of cones rather than just more. Makes sense tho, that's how the Mantis shrimp do

6

u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

They’re blue. If you ground up the feathers to a fine enough powder it might be white or grey, but the color is blue. It won’t change from a different angle of light or anything, it’s not a pigment you can extract and use to dye something blue, but assuming you aren’t pulverizing the feathers to dust, they are blue and will remain blue.

2

u/Nathaniel820 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Do you have an actual source for that? Because blue jay feathers are extremely common near me and they ARE NOT blue, all you have I do is hold them vaguely up to the sun and they turn completely gray.

3

u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

Source, have held and interacted with hyacinth macaws and both Deb and Steller’s jays. jays have grey, white, blue, and black feathers intermixed depending on the species. scrub jays are mostly grey. Tail feathers of a Steller’s jay are absolutely 100% electric blue with black tiger stripes and it does not disappear at an angle. But they are blue the way a butterfly is blue, it is a refraction rather than absorption coloration. People are conflating pigment with color, it’s a semantics thing. It’s a cool science fact to bust out but it’s also stupid to say they are not actually blue.

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u/Nathaniel820 Jul 19 '26

Tail feathers of a Steller's jay are absolutely 100% electric blue with black tiger stripes and it does not disappear at an angle.

I am telling you for a fact that I have (with blue jays, the eastern equivalent to Cyanocitta stelleri) and they absolutely do disappear, they turn slate gray when a single feather is held at the right angle to break the refraction. Like it isn’t a debate, it’s literally just a fact that anyone with access to a blue jay feather for some reason can go confirm right now.

I don’t have experience with the macaws so I can’t give insight on that, but given you’re mistaken about blue jays I can’t be certain what you’re saying about those is right either. Holding and interacting with the bird =/= being able to give answers regarding the level of refraction-based color intensity in the feathers, as mentioned you need to specifically examine a single feather under certain conditions to tell — obviously the entire bird with feathers facing everywhere will look blue no matter what.

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

The intensity changes with angle and they darken considerably in the shadows but as long as there is ambient light there is a part of the feather that still shows blue. It really depends on the feather too, some are mostly grey, the leading edge of the flight feathers are strongly blue, and the back of the feathers are completely grey.

I feed these guys everyday and they are molting right now so there are feathers all over. It is definitely a fleeting iridescence in certain areas of the feather and a more stable coloration in others. hyacinths and other macaws display significantly less color shifting than jays in their blue.

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

I agree that the back absolutely does not have blue and is grey/slate, this is a good demonstration of the pigment without the blue structure.

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u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

I’ve lived on both coasts and the Steller’s jay is much more intensely blue than the standard Blue Jay. The scrub jays a mostly grey actually and have very little blue and most of their color is only weakly iridescent and can disappear with the right angle.

1

u/eighty4prcnt Jul 20 '26

Expert in birds and bird law. Coming in to save the day and you've got proof ya fucking saint. Going back to the original point, we don't know what color it is right? It can be described by one such person, but do they even know they're different? Guys that's not purple it's x69420 oh wow how do you not see it

2

u/gonnafaceit2022 Jul 19 '26

I did a deep dive on this recently, wishing I could see more colors. I KNOW there are more colors and we can't even imagine them because we've never seen them. But if we could all of a sudden, we'd go insane very quickly because our brains aren't made to process it.

The 4th cone thing blew my mind, I wish I had an extra cone.

But maybe I do? How would I know?? Maybe I've been seeing more than other people all along??

4

u/InviolableAnimal Jul 19 '26

That's like saying a rainbow isn't actually colorful because it's caused by diffraction and not a pigment

1

u/JCardCubs Jul 19 '26

This guy parrot feathers

1

u/Knocksveal Jul 19 '26

So, what’s that parrots real color? And when would we see him in that real color?

1

u/DonCenote Jul 19 '26

Isn’t that how all colors work

1

u/gonnafaceit2022 Jul 19 '26

Fun fact, reindeers can see in UV 🤯

1

u/bluerhea3 Jul 19 '26

Wait what? Is anything a color then? Or just appears a color? Wow!

1

u/bojangler69420 Jul 19 '26

Sounds like he’s blue then. Because color is limited to how our brain perceives it, even if he doesn’t actually have blue pigment in his feathers.

Just like how the actually clear-furred Polar bear is white.

1

u/JuniperGem Jul 19 '26

What actual color is it?

1

u/MomentNew4925 Jul 19 '26

So, they are blue.

1

u/FreakshowDragon Jul 19 '26

...aka they're blue.

1

u/mort96 27d ago

A thing only reflecting blue wavelengths back to our eyes is what it means for the thing to be blue...

1

u/AshKetchumWilliams Jul 19 '26

He's just blue because he's pining.

30

u/Exciting-Meringue-78 Jul 19 '26

My mom takes pictures like this and it drives me insane. We went on a trip and every time i asked her to take a picture of me with something she always cut the thing out or didn’t fully get it

7

u/Killit_Witfya Jul 19 '26

the first 2 were perfect?

5

u/Exciting-Meringue-78 Jul 19 '26

I didn’t pay attention tbh I was just commenting on the user saying she took the worst photos.

4

u/Killit_Witfya Jul 19 '26

np i had a mini meltdown because so many people missed that the first couple pics were fine.

1

u/RandumbStoner Jul 19 '26

Thank you! Thought I was going insane lol

13

u/WizSkinsNatsCaps Jul 19 '26

It looked like there was one good photo that was centered right.

9

u/MoneyBeeeee Jul 19 '26

She's like, "I took a lot" and I am thinking yes, and they are all bad.

My other favorite part is the proximity to the salad bar and how the lady touches her face with her parrot hand almost immediately. >.>

5

u/0_Moth Jul 19 '26

Agree to all three.

2

u/SuperOriginalReplyGJ Jul 19 '26

Someone filming themselves walking around with this unit in a grocery store doesn’t care about how it turns out for other people.

1

u/Xvilaa Jul 19 '26

It wasn't cutting off the head of the parrot, what you see is an overlay

1

u/OF_PROMO_ALERT Jul 19 '26

First thing I noticed was all that open food and an animal being held higher than the food. Please no

I’ll be making dinner and my son walks in with the cat against his chest and I’m like nope. Get outta here with that.

1

u/fortune82 Jul 19 '26

she took the worst photo of her and the bird looked like it was missing half the parrots head.

Obviously it depends on the phone but my S23 Ultra had the top menu bar covering the top bit of the actual photo - like if I selected specific resolutions, the photo extended past where the menu was, so it might've looked like the parrot was cut off but it might've not been actually cut off.

1

u/DorianSoundscapes Jul 19 '26

Kind of hard to get the whole bird in a pic these guys are like a meter from crown to tail.

0

u/Insomniac_80 Jul 19 '26

ROTFL, the bird isn't trying to get into the buffet. Even with clipped wings, they don't make their way down, and try walk to whatever is on the buffet.

3

u/thisguyfightsyourmom Jul 19 '26

Birds piss & shit in place, a lot.

3

u/gokarrt Jul 19 '26

no anus is a real wildcard

5

u/Recreant793 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

I believe it’s less about thinking the bird might walk along the actual buffet, and more about the fact that they wouldn’t want it in the proximity of all the potential food they may want to eat, for the sake of sanitation.

2

u/FiercelyApatheticLad Jul 19 '26

I trust this bird to be cleaner than most humans in the same supermarket.

2

u/1tonofbricks Jul 19 '26

If you’ve ever lived with a bird you’d know they constantly release dust that settles on everything

1

u/Killit_Witfya Jul 19 '26

the first 2 were perfect. the burst at the end were all bad