• Question: how come we can see in colour when it isnt nessery for us too?

    Asked by elizabethlee to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      There are cones and rods in our eyes that help us see in color! Seeing in color is probably an evolutionary advantage that we earned through natural selection and evolution! Many times it is useful for you to see in color… lots of things in the plant and animal kingdom, for example, use the color RED to scare off predators or attract mates, and we would need to see in color to know to stay away from a red flower or a red snake that would poisonous, for example! Many plants have beautiful colors, even though they themselves can’t see of course, to attract pollinators or to detract animals from eating them!!!! Now how would you know all that if you could only see black and white?!!!!!!!!!!

      http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      THere was I guy on my BTEC course called Jez who had a disorder called ‘Achromatopsia’ meaning he had monochromatic vision – he couldn’t see any colour at all!!

      For him it was odd because he would see ‘phantom shadows’ for example where a shadow would fall on a blue wall, we would see it was a lighter blue and a darker blue. To him if there was a coloured pattern on a wall or floor sometimes the colours would look as if they were a shadow for a nonexistant object to him.

      How odd is that!!

      Jez had a great eye for detail and is now a costume designer for some great theatre companies. He reckons part of his talent comes from ‘not being distracted by the noise of colour’.

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Our eyes work best I the green because, it is believed that being able to distinguish predators against a green back ground gave our ancestors the advantage they needed to survive. There is a great book by schrodinger called what is life. He looks at your question a little differently, why would nature do something, which takes energy, unless it really needs to do it. Eyes take up a lot of energy to keep them running, so in our past they obviously meant the difference between living and being eaten.

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