I notice that there are a lot of red and green cones here and very few blue. Is that the reason that the blue portion of the graphs we have been looking at so small? Is there a biological / evolutionary reason that we have so few blue cones?
adityasingh7311
I remember seeing a video a while back that talked about how blue is one of the rarest colors in nature (there are few blue plants and animals). I can't find that exact one right now but I think there are few that talk about the absence of blue in nature on Youtube. Maybe that lack of blue subjects is related to the number of blue cones?
Zc0in
It is highly likely that we are induced to evolve our eyes to be, because of the influence of the environment, the most sensitive to green. Today after the evolution of the eye, the visual cone cells responsible for the perception of color only accounts for one eighteenth of the visual rod cells that perceive the intensity of light, in the visual cone cells are additionally divided into three kinds of green, red and blue, and the ratio of the number of its visual cone cells is 40:20:1.
ClaireLiu123
I did some research and I found out that most mammals only have 2 types of cone cells, for green and blue/ultraviolet light. Is that means they cannot see some color that human see in daily life?
sartk
I believe they are not able to perceive the range of colors in the longer wavelength end of the visible spectrum, such as red, orange, and yellow. To them, these colors may appear as shades of gray or brown.
Staffyirenng
Good discussion!
@AlexSchedel -- you are right that there are relatively few S cones (marked blue). And S cones are evolutionarily ancient compared to M/L cones. I am not sure if there is a dominant theory about why S cones are relatively uncommon in the cone mosaic, but one fact is that the chromatic aberrations of the eye are such that the image detectable by the S cones is quite blurry to that visible to the M cells -- and the sampling density of S cone cells may be well suited to the blurriness of that S signal. In any case, the small fraction of S cones is separate, though, from why the S cones in the spectral response graphs are relatively small -- those S responses are estimates based on the latest human vision science data, as composed by David Brainard.
Staffyirenng
@ClaireLiu123 yes, different species have different numbers of cone cells, and many mammals have only 2 types. Squirrel monkey males have 2 types while females of the same species have 3. Hummingbirds, and many other types of birds, have 4 types of cones -- and recent research provides evidence that they can discriminate color in 4 dimensions.
I notice that there are a lot of red and green cones here and very few blue. Is that the reason that the blue portion of the graphs we have been looking at so small? Is there a biological / evolutionary reason that we have so few blue cones?
I remember seeing a video a while back that talked about how blue is one of the rarest colors in nature (there are few blue plants and animals). I can't find that exact one right now but I think there are few that talk about the absence of blue in nature on Youtube. Maybe that lack of blue subjects is related to the number of blue cones?
It is highly likely that we are induced to evolve our eyes to be, because of the influence of the environment, the most sensitive to green. Today after the evolution of the eye, the visual cone cells responsible for the perception of color only accounts for one eighteenth of the visual rod cells that perceive the intensity of light, in the visual cone cells are additionally divided into three kinds of green, red and blue, and the ratio of the number of its visual cone cells is 40:20:1.
I did some research and I found out that most mammals only have 2 types of cone cells, for green and blue/ultraviolet light. Is that means they cannot see some color that human see in daily life?
I believe they are not able to perceive the range of colors in the longer wavelength end of the visible spectrum, such as red, orange, and yellow. To them, these colors may appear as shades of gray or brown.
Good discussion!
@AlexSchedel -- you are right that there are relatively few S cones (marked blue). And S cones are evolutionarily ancient compared to M/L cones. I am not sure if there is a dominant theory about why S cones are relatively uncommon in the cone mosaic, but one fact is that the chromatic aberrations of the eye are such that the image detectable by the S cones is quite blurry to that visible to the M cells -- and the sampling density of S cone cells may be well suited to the blurriness of that S signal. In any case, the small fraction of S cones is separate, though, from why the S cones in the spectral response graphs are relatively small -- those S responses are estimates based on the latest human vision science data, as composed by David Brainard.
@ClaireLiu123 yes, different species have different numbers of cone cells, and many mammals have only 2 types. Squirrel monkey males have 2 types while females of the same species have 3. Hummingbirds, and many other types of birds, have 4 types of cones -- and recent research provides evidence that they can discriminate color in 4 dimensions.