Café Scientifique: Animal Colour Vision

DOORS 7PM | SPEAKER 7.30PM

Please note that we are entirely dependent on donations from those who attend our events. You can make a donation as you arrive or leave; we are happy to accept cash or card payments. All donations greatly appreciated!

Please ensure you REGISTER prior to attending!

Daniel Osorio has worked at the School of Life Sciences in Sussex University for over thirty years. He has studied vision and the visual worlds of many animals, including butterflies, birds, fish, cuttlefish and even monkeys, seeking to understand how historical chance and functional necessity explain how they see colour and form.

In the Origin of Species Darwin saw that a ‘nearly similar taste for beautiful colours runs through a large part of the animal kingdom’, but cautioned that explanation was ‘very obscure’.

For much of the 20th century there was debate about what was obvious to Darwin – that non-human species saw colour, but today researchers combine knowledge of the light sensing cells in our eyes with experiments on animal behaviour to understand how non-human species, such as bees, birds and fish, perceive and learn about colour. To finish I might try to answer to Darwin’s question about why we might share a nearly similar taste for beautiful colours with species whose eyes are brains are very different from our own.