Anglophone zoology suffers from orange-blindness
(writing in progress)
It may seem understandable that extremely few mammal species are called orange in vernacular or scientific English.
Owing to its Sanskrit1 origins, the term ‘orange’ has not been fully assimilated into scientific English. After all, this seems an unusual word for a colour, being both an adjective and a noun in describing the eponymous citrus fruit.
The word ‘orange’ and the associated citrus fruit only reached England relatively recently from southern Asia.
The brightest-hued of brownish animals have been described not as orange, but instead as 'chestnut', 'rufous', 'rusty', ‘golden’, or 'ochraceous'2. Many naturalists may see these terms as more accurate and precise than ‘orange’.
However, anglophone scientists have not been accurate, precise, objective or consistent in describing and naming orangeish-brown or brownish-orange3 species of animals.
The use of ‘red4’ and ‘reddish’ in both vernacular names and formal descriptions of mammals and birds is – despite its long-standing tradition in biology – incorrect where the hue referred to is demonstrably orange.
Terms such as 'chestnut', ‘rufous’, 'rusty', ‘golden’, and ‘ochraceous’, even if used consistently5, are no more scientific than ‘orange’, which unambiguously refers to a narrow range of electromagnetic wavelengths.
And the historical reasons given for these inaccuracies are not true, either rationally or factually.
Firstly, the logical link between colour and citrus fruits is weak because other examples of orange, such as autumn foliage, have always connected Britain, through Europe and western Asia, to southeast Asia.
Secondly, English has never lacked a term for this colour, because the Old English yellowred6 was originally available to describe animals called red7 inaccurately, e.g. red squirrel, red fox, and red deer.
Thirdly, the colour orange did not correspond historically with the eponymous fruit8. Orange citrus reached Britain as long ago as 1066, when Old English was unrecognisably different from present-day English. By contrast, the first record of the word 'orange' is from 1512, around the time when Modern English first arose.
Fourthly, Modern English – including the word ‘orange’ – has been written for half a millennium9, ample time for this colour to be applied to organisms10.
The real reasons for the anglophone bias against orange are cultural and subconsciously emotional, and therefore unscientific.
Whereas the most widespread Eastern traditions, e.g. Confucian, Buddhist and Hindu, have recognised, celebrated and even venerated this colour for thousands of years, most European traditions11 have tended to dismiss orange as frivolous despite taking red seriously.
The anglophone tendency to overlook orange persists to this day in biology. I suggest that this is at the expense of scientific rigour.
1 Other scientifically relevant examples of English terms derived from Sanskrit include the colours crimson and lilac and the various nouns cow, opal, rice, saccharine, sapphire, shampoo, sulphur, sugar, musk, lacquer, jungle, jackal, cheetah, and atoll.
2 and ‘ginger’ in the case of the domestic cat
3 Biologists tend to acknowledge orange colouration in animals which also display blue, such as the mandrill and various parrots and fishes. This can be explained by the particular conspicuousness, to the human eye, of orange when juxtaposed with blue.
4 e.g. red squirrel (Sciurius vulgaris), red-flanked duiker (Cephalophus rufilatus)
5 In reality these terms are used remarkably inconsistently in the biological literature.
6 This word, originally spelt ‘geoluread’ or ‘geoluhreadd’, correctly reflects the electromagnetic nature of the colour orange as a combination of yellow and red or an intermediate between yellow and red.
7 The same error is made even within the human species, because the hair colour of ‘red-headed’ individuals of Celtic ancestry is actually orange although never called orange.
8 To this day, the orange citrus fruit is known as Chinese apple (translated) in parts of Europe neighbouring Britain, such as the Netherlands. This is particularly significant because The Netherlands is unusual in Europe in having orange as its national colour.
9 The word ‘orange’ was used in Elizabethan times and was indeed written by Shakespeare, e.g. in the play Much Ado About Nothing.
10 especially considering the tendency for new vernacular names to proliferate locally
11 Modern science has its philosophical origins in ancient Greece, which lacked a word for orange. The Greek descriptions of colour, exemplified by Homer, combined various aspects of which hue (corresponding to wavelength) was only one. The ancient Greeks were psychologically ‘orange-blind’. Northern Europeans retain this cultural tendency to ‘orange-blindness’ with the noteworthy exception of The Netherlands, where orange has noble connotations.
(writing in progress)
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