Elements Attributed To Pigments?

[Beasty_Artemis]

Which elements to animals require to produce different pigments? Do different colors take more varied diets , like black and red, to concentrate in their bodies?
I was wondering if tortoise species with more pigment, like red and yellow foots, are more prone to extreme pyramiding....

 

[HI Tortoise Rescue]

Those would be compounds, not elements. Color, in itself, is genetic, & is usually related to the animal's environment. Not sure how you're tying in pyramiding, which happens in many species.

Ken

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

I don't know about a correlation between colorful tortoises and pyramiding, no matter the color.

Color serves a purpose. The idea is that mate choice and camouflage have driven colorfullness. The actual molecules that become color are very variable. Red in a tortoise's skin may be a different molecule than red in a snake's skin.

Some color are pigments in the animal, other colors are produced for our eyes by the way light is refracted through a cell or extracellular stuff (tortoise shell and feathers)

Light hits something and most of the spectrum is absorbed, what we see is the part of the spectrum that was reflected. I think of this as subtraction, all the light hit, some was subtracted the rest reflected.

In another case light hits somethings and the light is filtered through prismatic cells or extracellular stuff and becomes color by differentiation of reflection.
Tortoises have pigments, many birds feathers have the refraction system.

It is much more complicated than this, but this is the general idea.

Then think about feathers again, flamingo's color is strongly influenced by diet, it is pigment that is relocated from a diet item directly into the feathers.

Many parrots have both things going on at the same time in their features.

Feathers are a keratin extracellular stuff very similar to tortoise shell and scales. That's the loose relatedness.

As to which element, carbon is the biggy, but not as a stand alone. Look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pigment#Pigments_in_plants

 

[Glomerulus]

Pigments are generally large organic compounds, occasionally with some metallic elements complexed. Chlorophyll is one of the most well known, including magnesium alongside the standard organic elements.

We should always strive to feed our friends varied diets - their long term health depends on it. Many pigments found in fresh fruits and vegetables have secondary uses beyond their use as "sunscreen" in plants, being readily converted to vitamins or helping to prevent cancer.

 

[Glomerulus]

Those would be compounds, not elements. Color, in itself, is genetic, & is usually related to the animal's environment. Not sure how you're tying in pyramiding, which happens in many species.

Ken

A lot of pigments need to have "chemical scaffolds" provided because the animal's body does not have the toolset to create them. A well balanced fresh diet (or blend of prepared food) should provide the pigments necessary for ideal presentation of an animal's ornamental coloration.