Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Colors and Others


We don't all see the same, and when we apply that statement towards different species, it becomes something more than a matter of opinion. It's very hard to assess what other animals see when they don't possess the capability of human communication, obviously, but many scientists attribute the ability to see color towards certain genes. For example, a dichromat lacks certain genes and proteins that enable him/her to see color, while a trichromat is able to distinguish colors outside of the white/gray/black spectrum.
It is argued that birds have the most interesting color vision out of any group of animals, and it makes sense when you think about the rich, colorful plummage that many birds have. Most likely an evolutionary mutation allowed them to experience colors in the ultraviolet range. So there are many colors birds can see that we humans cannot. This might be attributed to the extra cone cell that is found in the avian eye.
Cones are the cells found in our eyes that allow us to interpret color. The cone cells found in bird's eyes allow them to see color in bright light and double cone cells allow them to see color in normal light situations. The human eye contains 200,000 cones per square millimeter, while there are 400,000 cone cells per square millimeter found in the House Sparrow. It's amazing to think what it must be like to see like a bird!


Sources: 1.http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/16/pandavision_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20061016093000
2. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=23047

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