Regarding the world's sighted creatures, which ones see color and other spectrums?

Question

Is there a breakdown on what animals/insects see color, just black/white/others?

Answer 1

There is not a specific "breakdown" of which animals see color.  Most vertebrate animals see some type of color.  It all depends on what kinds of photoreceptor cells they have in their eyes.

The eyes work when light enters the eye and hits special cells called photoreceptors in the the back of the eye.  There are different kinds of structures with photoreceptors, but most animals have at least two: rods and cones.  When the light hits these cells they "fire" and send electric impulses to the brain (or ganglia in case of insects), which is then interpreted to what we see.

Cones gather a lot more detail than rods, but require more light to fire.  That's why when it starts getting dark at night, you can still see but start to lose the ability to decipher certain details like color.  Animals such as dogs have more rods than cones, so although they will actually see color - they don't see it as vividly; it would be muted as compared to what we see.  On the flip side, they can see much better in the dark than we can.  Fox squirrels have mostly cones, but very few rods.  They can see vivid color detail, but are practically blind in the dark.  

Nocturnal animals usually have a lot of rods to see better at night.  Many also have a reflective layer in the back of the eye called a tapetum lucidum that bounces the light around the eye to "intensify" it, making it more likely to fire the photoreceptors.  That is why their eyes "glow" at night when hit with a flashlight or automobile headlights.

Birds, in addition to rods and cones, also have double cones.  So their "color vision" is much more enhanced than ours.  Some birds, like chickens, have very few rods and don't see well in the dark, and others, like owls, have many rods and a tapetum lucidum and see very well in the dark.

Insects eyes work a little differently because they have compound eyes, and some like dragonflies have both compound and single eyes.  They also have photoreceptors that can fire outside the range of what our "visible light" is:   They can see ultraviolet in addition to white light.  Plants utilize this to attract pollinating insects to the center of the flower (like a bulls-eye).  Here is a link with pictures showing how we see things and how a bee would see it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...

It's pretty interesting!

But basically, what detail an animal sees is dictated by what they have in their eyes - and there are too many different kinds of animals to list here.  So, if you are curious about specific animals, do some research on how many rods, cones, double cones, etc they have and that will tell you if they see vivid colors or not.