Do bulls react to the color red?

The red muleta is an essential attribute of any bullfight. Everyone knows the purpose of this cape - with its help, the brave toreador enrages the bull, and then skillfully "leads him by the nose", avoiding the sharp horns. It is believed that the muleta is red because this is the color that irritates the animal. But is this really true?

Bullfighting is a very cruel spectacle. Despite the efforts of animal rights activists, it is still popular in Spain, Portugal and some Latin American countries. First, the bull is driven to exhaustion, waving a muleta in front of it, and then wounded with banderillas - special darts. In the end, the unfortunate animal is stabbed with a sword.

We know that the bullfighter's muleta is red. It is believed that bulls get furious when they see red. But in fact, they don't care at all about the color of the cape. These animals have black and white vision. There are no cells in their retina that would distinguish red from any other color, such as green. By the way, if you watch a bullfight closely, you will see that bullfighters also use yellow and purple capes.

Bulls react to the sharp movements of a piece of cloth that the bullfighter waves in front of them. Moreover, the poor animals are also short-sighted. They perceive a muleta moving at some distance as some unknown threat, perhaps as a dangerous and agile opponent. The red color is used because it does not show traces of blood after the bull is wounded with banderillas or a sword.

The muleta experiment was conducted in 2007 by MythBusters. They tested the bulls' reactions to objects of different colors several times. First, three flags were placed in the animal's pen: red, white, and blue. The bull attacked all three indiscriminately, showing no preference for the red one.

Then three dummies of the same colors were placed in the same pen. And the bull again began to attack them indiscriminately. Moreover, in the experiment with dummies, the animal dealt with the red one last. So the hatred of cattle for the color red is nothing more than a myth.