Question: can you change the visions in animals from coloured to black and white and vice versa?

anon answered on 23 Jun 2015:

I general colour is an abstract thing and is actually interpreted by your brain.

Colour vision will depend on how well developed the cone cells there are in the retina. Most animals do not have very many and have very poor colour vision. Humans and promates have cone cells which have react to the 3 primary colour and combine to allow your brain to interpert the differences in intensities as a colour. At night the rod cells in your retina is more sensitive at low light levels, but does not give the perception of colour, so at night you tend to see things more monochromatically than suring day time when the cone cells are used and gives you a colour perception.

Your brain interpret signals from the optic nerve and interprest as colour but it can automatically balance these colours under different lighting conditions. In day light its more blue, at dusk the light is yellow/orange, with old tungsten lighting its orange, with florescent tube its slightly green. Our brain automatically adjust to the colour tinges and we do not notice the difference.

Some animals can see in the infra red and ultraviolet spectrum, which humans cannot.