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Do people with different eye colors see different colors?
Question Date: 2004-11-17
Answer 1:

That's an interesting question. Eye color does not make a difference in the colors that a person sees. There are two different kinds of color (called "pigment")involved and they are in two different places.

What we see as eye color is the color of the iris, which opens or closes to control the amount of light that gets into a person's eye. The more pigment a person has in their iris, the darker their eye is. A person with blue eyes has no pigment in his or her iris.

The other kind of pigment is deep inside the eye within the retina, which is the part that actually picks up light and sends messages to the brain. The parts of the retina that receive the light are called photoreceptors.

One type of photoreceptor is called a rod and it only lets us see black and white. Rods work well even when it's pretty dark. Cones let us see color, but only if they have the right pigments in them. You can't tell the difference in these pigments by looking, even if you could see inside a person's eye.

Why do you think that animals that hunt at night are usually colorblind?



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