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Orbit Knowledge

Bulls Do Not Charge Because a Cape Is Red. They Cannot See Red the Way People Do.

Cattle have two types of color receptors, not three. Red and green blur into dull tones for a bull, so the famous red cape cannot be what sets it off.

By Orbit Post2 min read
Read inENESNEHIFR
Bulls Do Not Charge Because a Cape Is Red. They Cannot See Red the Way People Do.

Key points

  • The bull is not angry at the color red.
  • Cattle are dichromats.
  • Researchers at the University of Leon in Spain tested color perception in fighting cattle directly, publishing their work in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 1989.

The bull is not angry at the color red. It cannot see red the way you do.

Cattle are dichromats. Their eyes carry two types of cone cells, the receptors that detect color, while human eyes carry three. A university textbook on color theory from RMIT University puts it plainly: cattle and most other mammals see a limited range of color, mostly pastel shades of blue and yellow, a pattern similar to red-green color blindness in people. To a bull, a scarlet cape reads as a dull, dark tone, not a flag of rage.

The eye gives the myth away

Researchers at the University of Leon in Spain tested color perception in fighting cattle directly, publishing their work in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 1989. Their conditioning experiments measured which colors the animals could tell apart from grey. The broader science of bovine vision, confirmed in university studies of cattle eyes and behavior, is consistent: there is no red receptor in the bull's eye doing what the myth needs it to do. The animal has no special channel for red at all.

So why does the bull charge the cape? Movement. A waved cloth is a sudden, shifting shape in front of an animal that has been bred and goaded to react. Bulls charge the matador's larger cape in the earlier part of a bullfight as well, and that cape is not the famous red one. The charge follows the motion, not the color.

Why the cape is red anyway

The red cape, called the muleta, belongs to the final act of the fight. Its color serves the audience and the ritual, not the bull. Red cloth hides bloodstains, and centuries of paintings, posters, and films burned the image into popular culture: red cape, angry bull, cause and effect. Humans see red as the color of anger and danger, so we assumed the bull did too.

The practical lesson travels well beyond the arena. A person standing still in a red shirt in a field is not waving a flag at a bull. A person waving anything, in any color, is far more likely to get its attention. The myth survives because the picture is dramatic. The biology is not.

Sources