The Black and White World – Colour Blindness in Animals

Animals like humans can see things like us, but have you ever thought that do these creatures know how to distinguish between various colours? Well, even scientists have had thought about colour differentiation in animals so they have performed a number of experiments on animals like dogs, cats, apes,etc for the purpose of finding an answer about the ability of animals to differentiate between various colours.

     After a number of researches being performed, it has been found out that dogs are one of those animals that cannot distinguish between colours. In a research when various foods and eatables of different colours were given to these animal, dogs, they could not make out the difference about the various colours of the food they were given. This study proved that dogs cannot identify different colours and are colour blind. Similar types of experiments were also performed in cats which also proved the colour blindness in cats.

   Besides human beings, it is only the apes that can differentiate between colours and are not colour blind.

   The tiny organism, the Honey Bee is also gifted with the ability of colour discrimination. Well, the honey bee cannot identify red colour. Red colour appears black to the honey bees. It is because of the ability of honey bees to identify and distinguish between various colours that they get attracted to flowers of beautiful colours and contrast from which they get honey. Another feature that they honey bee have is, they can see the ultra violet rays which man human beings cannot see.

   Birds are also not colour blind and can distinguish colours. In birds, the colours of the male birds are more attractive than the female ones. Therefore the female birds are attracted to the males because of their colour which the birds can distinguish. It is seen that birds have the ability to identify all the colours of the rainbow. Well, animals have no need also to identify and distinguish colours as animals stay in the jungle, hunt at night so they are colour blind as they do not have the need too for colour identification. However, animals do posses a very strong power of smell and the inability to differentiate colours and colour blindness do not affect them.