Can Animals Distinguish Different Colours?
Like human beings animals also can see things. But a question arises that can they differentiate between different colours like human beings?. To find answer, many experiments have been conducted on the animals like dogs, apes, cats, bees etc. by the scientists. They gave some eatables of different colours to the dogs. The difference in colours had no effect on them. This experiment has proved that dogs cannot identify different colours. The cats were also found to be colour blind when this type of experiments were conducted on them. 
In addition to man, ape is the only mammal which can distinguish between different colours, whereas all other mammals are colour blind. Honey bee is capable of distinguish between different colours. But it cannot identify the red colour as it appears black to it. Because of the identification of colours, the bees are attracted towards the flowers of different colours and collect honey from them. An experiment was conducted on bees to prove their power of colour vision. The bees were shown two cards- one of blue and other of red colour. They placed a little syrup on the blue card, but the red card was without syrup. The bees collected on the blue card. Now the blue card was kept at different place without any syrup on it. The bees gathered there also. This experiment proved that they can differentiate between different colours. The birds can also distinguish between different colours. The male birds have more attractive colours. Therefore the female birds attracted towards them because of their attractive colours. All the colours of the rainbow are also identified by the birds. Normally there is no need for the animals to differentiate between colours, as most of them hunt by night and they do not depend on colour. However, animals have greater power of smell therefore the colour blindness of animals does not handicap them.
Category: Animal Life