The Advantages of Color Vision

When we think of color vision, we imagine the variety of colors the human eye can see. Perhaps people may believe having color vision is a huge benefit for animals as opposed to having dichromatic or even monochromatic vision. If that would be the case, then why do not all the animals have color vision? A thought to keep in mind is what is the purpose of seeing color for animals. We will dive deeper into how color vision may play a role in the lives of animals and humans. The different groups of animals we will examine are the marine animals, wild Neotropical monkeys, primates, and humans as well.
The first area that will be covered will be animals with monochromatic vision. We must know what it means to have monochromatic vision before we can understand why animals have that certain kind of vision. Monochromatic vision happens because there is a cone of vision that is missing. Leo Peichl stated that many marine mammals lack the S-cone opsin and only have an L-cone opsin (1520). Several of these animals include the harbour seal, toothed whale, ringed seal, eared seal, earless seal, and the bottlenose dolphin. The lack of ability to see more colors is not just applied to the marine mammals. There are two primates that have this color blindness, which are the owl monkey and the bushbaby (Peichl 1520). In the water, color vision is not that important. Animals are capable of using different senses and instincts in order to overcome their inefficiencies. Echolocation is a tool that marine mammals have to help them find food so they don't have to use their vision. Peichl believes that because there is a low amount of light during the night and the marine mammals have adapted to still be able to see leads him to think " colour vision m...

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