As you may know, we're somewhat unusual among mammals, one of the few that has excellent color vision. We can speculate that most lack this ability because generally mammals are night creatures, when color vision is useless. Our primate ancestors, though, adapted to daytime living in the trees, where survival depended in part on determining suitable food by its color.
Before we get too prideful over being able to see color, however,
perhaps we should be reminded that many animals that we think of as primitive often are
every bit as talented as we are. Many of our desert birds, reptiles, and fish are fully
attuned to color. Unlike most mammals, that tend to depend more on smell, they often
use color to determine who's a member of their own species, who's mature and
who's not, and who's male and who's female. And many of our lizards have an
advantage over birds, who are stuck in their feathered outfits for months at a time, in
that patches of color appear announcing when they're in the mood for love.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.