Color Or Black And White

I was talking to some people this week and one of them was telling the group about a dream she had had about t-shirt colors as it related to our conversation.  Another person said something about don't we all dream in black and white?  Another person said that black and white is really a new concept to people dating back only to when photographs and t.v. were invented.

I found this so interesting, mostly because I had never thought of it myself, that I had to come home and ponder it with the kids.   We decided that it must be true that black and white is a new concept because why would anyone just single out black and white.  Why not blue and orange or any other color combination.  We also dream in color, in fact Dancer just had a dream last night that she was riding a carnival banana ride that was yellow and I dreamt there was a blue mongoose in my room chasing away snakes.  It was a little hard to fall back asleep after that one because I had to convince myself in my sleep like mind that it couldn't be true since we don't live in India. 

We also wondered if animals really see in black and white?  We looked into this and found that there is a lot of discussion about this very topic out there in the scientific world.  A few interesting things we did find is that to see colors like we do, we need to have three different types cone cells.  Dogs and deer have two cones so they are what we would call color blind.  For example, we can wear blaze orange hunting and the deer see it as a shade of green.  Dogs see red and green the same so it was advised in one source that you don't let your dog drive the car.  Most fish, reptiles and birds see in color like humans.  Birds, lizards and turtles have an oil droplet by their eye cones and it is thought that this droplet may let them see colors more vividly.    Snakes have a pit organ just below their nostril and in front of their eye that lets them detect infrared light.  Mice, gerbils, bees, butterflies and many songbirds can see ultraviolet light.  All this, of course, is only theoretical and we will won't know with absolute certainty until these animals start talking and can do so on a quite advanced level.

We could keep pondering this but we have probably given it enough thought and will move on to the next topic that catches our attention and sends us down a rabbit trail.