• Question: Are there other colours that we can't see but other animals can?

    Asked by monkey123 to Alison, Hannah, Jonny, MarthaNari, Paul on 22 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      Yes.

      There are cells in our eyes called cone cells that allow us to see colours. Humans have three different types of cones that allow us to see red, green and blue. All of the other colours we see are a mixture of these three.

      Dogs only have two types of cones (green and blue) so they are likely to see less colours than us.

      Butterflies have 5 types and the Mantis shrimp has 16. So these animals are likely to see colours that we can’t even imagine.

      Here’s a video which tells you all about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IRZ0_lP4Rs

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      As Jonny said, quite a few animals can see more colours than us. Some of them are just precise versions of the same light we see – like being able to distinguish 100s of shades of what we call blue. But other animals also see light that we can’t even see at all. What it comes down to is that what we call colour is really light waves of different lengths. Red colours are slow, long light waves, blueish colours are fast, narrow light waves. Which colours we can see depends on whether we have cells in our eyes that get activated by a certain wave length of light. Those cells then report the light to the brain as a colour. Humans don’t have cells that are sensitive to wave lengths even narrower and faster than blue (ultraviolet) or slower and longer than red (infrared). But bees for example have cells that get activated by ultraviolet light. They seem to use that light especially to find flowers that will feed them. 🙂

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 26 Jun 2015:

      Here’s an article with some pictures which have been altered to show what a particular animal looking at it might see: http://www.colormatters.com/color-matters-for-kids/how-animals-see-color

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