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In the comments in the OP's website, I found another theory: Barns are painted red so they are seen from a distance, not only during snow storms but every day
by cantrevealname 13y ago
In the comments in the OP's website, I found another theory:
Barns are painted red so they are seen from a distance, not only during snow storms but every day of the year. Livestock need to be able to recognize and return to it daily. Barns have to be visible from country roads and fields by humans as well as beasts. It would not be wise to paint your barn lets say white to blend into the snow, or green to blend into the summer crops. (Comment by Yvonne Wenz)
As you already noted from your searches on Google, there is a lot of speculation out there -- who knows if theory is correct or not. But I thought it was non-obvious and quite interesting.
- DanBC 13y agoCows are red/green colour blind, so a red shed against green fields and trees wouldn't be so visible to them. (http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Paper/5494786 http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Paper/5494786) (Google - your internet-enabled spell checker grey-underlined "Colour blind" and a right click suggested "colorblind" even though my settings are for a UK dictionary. I wonder if we'll see language drift as more and more people spell check with crowd-sourced dictionaries?)
- chinpokomon 13y agoOff topic, but I've been making that argument for years. I actually was more concerned that language would stop evolving to accommodate spell checking. I'm glad to see that text messaging has proven me wrong, but in many ways I'm more concerned about what the next generation will consider to be "language."