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The human eye's red-to-green and blue-to-yellow values of each one-wavelength visible color [citation needed] Human color sensation is defined by the sensitivity curves (shown here normalized) of the three kinds of cone cells: respectively the short-, medium- and long-wavelength types.
Birds, however, can see some red wavelengths, although not as far into the light spectrum as humans. [46] It is a myth that the common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infrared and ultraviolet light; [47] their color vision extends into the ultraviolet but not the infrared. [48]
Today, most mammals possess dichromatic vision, corresponding to protanopia red–green color blindness. They can thus see violet, blue, green and yellow light, but cannot see ultraviolet or deep red light. [5] [6] This was probably a feature of the first mammalian ancestors, which were likely small, nocturnal, and burrowing.
Unique hues have also been shown to change over the course of the year as a result of adaptation to differences in the color spectrum of the environment in summer compared to winter, [25] and have been shown to change after surgery to remove cataracts. [26]
Trichromatic color vision is the ability of humans and some other animals to see different colors, mediated by interactions among three types of color-sensing cone cells. The trichromatic color theory began in the 18th century, when Thomas Young proposed that color vision was a result of three different photoreceptor cells .
The spectrum does not contain all the colors that the human visual system can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations like magenta, for example, are absent because they can only be made from a mix of multiple wavelengths. Colors containing only one wavelength are also called pure colors or spectral colors. [8] [9]
Monochromacy (from Greek mono, meaning "one" and chromo, meaning "color") is the ability of organisms to perceive only light intensity without respect to spectral composition. Organisms with monochromacy lack color vision and can only see in shades of grey ranging from black to white. Organisms with monochromacy are called monochromats.
Dichromacy in humans is a form of color blindness (color vision deficiency). Normal human color vision is trichromatic, so dichromacy is achieved by losing functionality of one of the three cone cells. The classification of human dichromacy depends on which cone is missing: Protanopia is a severe form of red-green color blindness, in which the ...