Can Animals See In Colour?

The world is bright with colours all around. It is hard to believe that the animals do not see as we do. Animals cannot tell us. How should we find out whether animals can see in colour as we do?

Many experiments have been carried out by scientists. The bee has been the subject of studies in hundreds of tests. We have been particular to know whether the bee tells flowers apart by their colour. In one of the experiments a bit of syrup was put in front of, a blue card, and no syrup in front of a red one. After a while the bees would come to the blue card, no matter where it was placed, even if it had no syrup in front of it. This proved they could tell colours apart.

During a test conducted to find out bee’s ability, two strange things were observed. The first is that a bee cannot see red as a colour. For a bee, it is only dark grey or black. The second is that bees can see ultraviolet as colour, while for human beings, it is just darkness.

Male birds have bright colours. Can those colours be seen by female birds. Experiments have been carried out with hens. It was proven that hens can see all the colours of rainbow. There is a surprise in store. The animal is probably closest of all to man as friend, the dog is colourblind! All the experiments carried out on dog till recently prove that dog can not tell one colour from another. Many times we think dog is responding to colour, he is in actual responding to some other sign or clue. This may be size, smell or shape. Dog lovers should not be disappointed on the account because the dogs smell sense is so great that it probably compensates the inability to see colour. Cats too, seem to be colour blind.

Monkeys and Apes have a good colour sense. In general, most mammals are colour blind, the bulls too.

Most mammals hunt during night and do not depend on colour, gives us to prove that this is the reason in their colour-blindness. They are also usually in dull colours and thus colour is not important in their lives.