Do Animals See the Same Colors that We Do?

In general, most animals see differently than we do. The closest thing to our vision, is the vision of monkeys and other primates. Even though monkeys have similar vision, that doesn't mean that all mammals do. Dogs only have dichromat vison, which means that they are only sensitive to a couple colors. They usually react to the colors green and red the most. Cats on the other hand have trichromat vision, and other mammals are different also. Mostly, survival is the key factor in how an animal's vision works.

The color vision of any animal (including us) is just how our perception shows how an object looks, because of what wavelengths and frequencies it reflects or emits.

Insects use a compound vision because they have hundreds and thousands of little lens for eyes. Each one of those lens makes up the whole picture, unlike the belief that the picture is seen in each eye. Each insect's perception of color varies, butterflies see brighter colors than we do. Another odd thing about insects, is how bees react only to brighter colors and ultraviolet but don't see red, because they adapted to see the flowers that have the most nectar, which is a necessity for their survival.

A bee and a flower

A horses vision is also an odd one, because it is seperated into two views, one out of each eye, because each eye is faced in the opposite direction. This causes them to have good night vision, but bad color vision. They can make out certain shades of colors, especially blues and greens, but cannot see orange.

A horse in the middle of a test to see

what color the horse reacts to the most.

Some rumors of how animals see colors aren't true also. One of them is how bulls can see red, which comes from when matadors would wave a red cape to attract the bull. In reality, bulls cannot see red, and only see differing shades of grey. What actually attracts them to charge at the cape is the movement of the matador waving it around.

A bull and a matador.

Overall, the vision of an animal is a toss up. Some have color vision for no reason, and others like the bee, have it for the key reason of surviving in their environment. For the majority of it, it is a comeplete mystery.

Sources

http://www.eyes-and-vision.com/how-animals-see-the-world.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision

http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17.html

http://www.greatsunflower.org/files/images/dark_honey_bee_hemberger.jpg

http://img6.travelblog.org/Photos/12763/372100/f/3442743-Matador-fighting-bull-1-0.jpg