Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!uci-ics!honig From: honig@ics.uci.edu (David A. Honig) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Which animals are color blind ? Message-ID: <25897473.1196@paris.ics.uci.edu> Date: 15 Dec 89 22:47:15 GMT References: <8938@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Reply-To: David A. Honig Organization: University of California, Irvine - Dept of ICS Lines: 26 In article <8938@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> muttiah@cs.purdue.edu (Ranjan Samuel Muttiah) writes: > >Could some knowledgeable biologist on the net tell us which >animals are color conscious and whether there were evolutionary >reasons for this ? > >Thank You Well, I'm not trained as a biologist, but I do study vision. Color vision appears all over the animal kindom, with varying numbers of cone types (ie some animals are 'colorblind' but do discriminate some bcolors). Also, the spectral sensitivities of different animals differ (their best 'red' isn't ours; but there are people who have slightly different photopigments too.) Goldfish have color vision. Some primates have it, some don't. Reasons: Nocturnal animals tend not to, being entirely rod-based. The theory about primate color vision is that red/green discrimination is real useful if you spend your time looking for ripe fruit against foliage....but wouldn't you have to examine each species' niche to discover how color vision is useful? -- David A. Honig ... Paternalism is a first step towards totalitarian statism.