Summary
- Many animals use colour to communicate, but for those that are colour blind, these signals are pointless.
- For example, a peacock’s colourful tail is intended to attract a mate, but this would be useless for a colourblind animal.
- As a result, scientists have long debated which came first: the colour, or the colour vision needed to see it?
- Evolutionary ecologist John Wiens and others have now pieced together the timelines of colour signals and colour vision.
- In an evolutionary sense, colour vision came first, and all the colourful signals came later.
- There are exceptions and uncertainties, but this suggests that colour vision was always useful, even before there were colourful things to see.
- For example, colour vision could have evolved to help animals navigate their environment.
- But once colour vision evolved, animals could then begin to exploit colourful signals.
By Molly Herring
Original Article