Do fish see in color?
- Thread starter salty gal
- Start date
lkgrenegade22
Member
I would think so. Otherwise there would be no reason for fish to react differently to the same type but different color fishing lures at the same time.
subielover
Active Member
I recently wondered about this as well.
aquaknight
Active Member
That's a very broad question, but in a short, yes, some fish do see color, some don't. Catfish, for instance are colorblind. To see, the eyeball is made up of 'rods and cones.' (Wiki link). The rods are sensitive to light, help with 'brightness' of an object (also help see in 'low-light' conditions), as well as motion. Cones help see color and help see in daylight conditions. Almost every type of eye has many, many rods. Cones are limited, the human eye only has 3, which allows us to see about 300,000 different colors. Each cone makes up a different spectrum of light. Long wavelength, medium, and short. So when the eye sees a red object (long wavelength), it reacts to it.
Here's where it gets cool with fish. The catfish example, they have zero cones, and are completely colorblind. However, most predatory fish, have at least 3 cones, some with 4 or even 5 cones. So they are able to see colors we can only began to imagine, and some fishes vision also extends into the UV light spectrum.
One final thing to consider and that almost every fish has it's eyes on opposite sides of it's body, and therefore doesn't have the 'binocular vision' like humans have. The basic understanding is that they see more or less two distinct images, that overlap a bit. Therefore most fish have poor distance vision, but see very well close up.
Unfortunately, research pertaining to common aquarium fish, is limited at best. If I had to guess, I'd say most marine fish have far superior vision (like almost everything else) to their freshwater counterparts, and have at least 2 cones (damsels and clowns for instance). As where fish that depend on color, angels, etc, might have 3 or more? I'm straight guessing here though.
Here's where it gets cool with fish. The catfish example, they have zero cones, and are completely colorblind. However, most predatory fish, have at least 3 cones, some with 4 or even 5 cones. So they are able to see colors we can only began to imagine, and some fishes vision also extends into the UV light spectrum.
One final thing to consider and that almost every fish has it's eyes on opposite sides of it's body, and therefore doesn't have the 'binocular vision' like humans have. The basic understanding is that they see more or less two distinct images, that overlap a bit. Therefore most fish have poor distance vision, but see very well close up.
Unfortunately, research pertaining to common aquarium fish, is limited at best. If I had to guess, I'd say most marine fish have far superior vision (like almost everything else) to their freshwater counterparts, and have at least 2 cones (damsels and clowns for instance). As where fish that depend on color, angels, etc, might have 3 or more? I'm straight guessing here though.