Color Vision from Fruit-Hunting Ancestors

[Claire.]

You can thank your fruit-hunting ancestors for your color vision.

Among mammals, primates are unique in that certain species have three different types of light-sensitive cone cells in their eyes rather than two. This allows humans and their close relatives to see what we think of as the standard spectrum of color. (Humans with red-green color blindness, of course, see a different spectrum.) The standard explanation for why primates developed trichromacy, as this kind of vision is called, is that it allowed our early ancestors to see colorful ripe fruit more easily against a background of mostly green forest.

Read more: Science Magazine