Are fish colour blind

[leongreenway]

Just wondered if fish see in colour

[fish_doc]

Found this about fish sight. Hope it helps you out.

Can fish see in color or in black-and white? Many fish have color vision but some colors do not penetrate deeper water - blue is better seen at depth than red or yellow. Fish color vision is probably very different from ours. Contrast betweeen the color of the foreground and the background is important for their sight.


Can they see how far you or a predator are from them - "depth vision"? Most fish cannot do it very well by sight alone. Two eyes need to focus on the same target in order to have good depth perception. Fish have an eye on each side of the head and, with some infrequent exeptions, can only see using one eye at a time. Therefore they need other senses such as smell, electric as well as the pressure senses on each side of the body to estimate distance from them.

Do they see magnified images because of the glass of the tank? In most aquaria the glass does not magnify much, though water can distort light. Water/air or water/glass interfces can distort light.

With one eye on each side, how does their vision differ from ours? They can see all about them, almost 360 degrees, while we can only see in front. The blind area at the back is much less for fish than for humans.


Can they see in deep dark ocean? Many fish and sharks have a special kind of eye that allows them to see in poor light. A mechanism exists for passing the light through the eye twice, comming in and going out. This is the same system as the cats eye that reflects the light back and appears to 'shine in the dark'.

[Lexus]

thats interesting fishdoc!

[Vivid-Dawn]

I always assumed fish can see in color... why would the males be so fancy in hues, if everything was washed out in grays anyway?

[fishboy]

they can see in color. While on a coffee craze i stayed up till 2 am watching something on the deep sea and it showed that most creatures down there are red because the color red is harder to see at that depth because the fish see in color

[Scuba Kid]

yes they can see in color. otherwise males wouldnt need to be bright and bright colors couldnt scare off bigger fish that are predators

[osteoporoosi]

I read somewhere that they see some colours.