Color Me Beautiful
Posted by Lindsey Peglowski on March 10, 2007
Q: I was wondering how they discover that birds, turtle, fish, etc. can see in color but that other mammals cannot?
State: New York
A: As I understand it, there are two ways to determine whether an animal can or can not see color. One way would be to examine an animal's eye to see whether it has the proper cone cells in its eyes that can distinguish colors. Humans and many primates have 3 types of color receptor cone cells in their eyes that make it possible to provide color vision. Another way is to monitor a conditioned response of the animal in question to a reward that is based on color - this would probably be achieved with food. I believe the latter method is one that has been most widely used to identify which animals can or can not see color. Take a look at this website that gives some info on color vision. en.wikipedia.org
Hope this helps. Thanks for asking.
John Wiessinger ( March 11, 2007)