Today is a special day for Jessi and her friend Squeaks because they are exploring their favorite colors through food! Jessi loves green, and Squeaks is a fan of red. They had green asparagus for dinner and are now ready to enjoy a shiny, red apple for dessert.
When you look at a red apple, the color you see is actually how your brain understands the light bouncing off the apple. Your eyes have a special part at the back called the retina, which helps you see. The retina has two important parts: rods and cones. Rods help you see in the dark, while cones help you see colors.
There are three types of cones in your retina. Some cones look for reddish colors, some for greenish colors, and others for bluish colors. When light from the apple reaches your eyes, the cones that like red get excited and send a message to your brain, telling it what colors they saw.
Most people can see all the colors in the rainbow because they have all three types of cones. However, some people are colorblind, which means they have only two types of cones working properly. For example, people who are red-green colorblind have trouble seeing red and green as clearly as others. These colors might look dull or similar to them.
Another type of colorblindness is blue-yellow colorblindness, where people have trouble telling blue and yellow apart. This happens because of a problem with their blue cones.
Different animals see colors differently because they have different types or numbers of cones. For instance, dogs have only two types of cones, so they see the world a bit like people with red-green colorblindness. Red and green might look more like shades of blue, yellow, and gray to them. So, if you’re buying a toy for your dog, a bright yellow or blue ball would be more fun for them than a red one.
Some lucky people have four types of cones, which means they see even more colors than most of us! And bees, for example, have three types of cones, but they see green, blue, and ultraviolet light instead of red. Ultraviolet light is invisible to us, but bees can see it, which helps them find flowers with special patterns that look like targets to them.
One of the most fascinating creatures is the mantis shrimp, which lives in the ocean. It can have twelve or even sixteen different kinds of cones! Some of these cones are for seeing ultraviolet light. Scientists are still learning about how the world looks to them, but with so many cones, it must be incredibly colorful!
Now that we’ve learned so much about colors, it’s time for Jessi and Squeaks to enjoy their delicious apple. If you want to keep learning and having fun with them, make sure to subscribe to their channel for more exciting adventures!
Color Hunt: Go on a color hunt around your home or garden! Find objects that match the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Once you’ve collected your colorful items, try to arrange them in the order of a rainbow. Discuss with a friend or family member how each object reflects its color and how your eyes and brain work together to see these colors.
Make Your Own Color Wheel: Use crayons, markers, or colored pencils to create a color wheel. Draw a big circle on a piece of paper and divide it into six sections. Color each section with a different color of the rainbow. Talk about how the colors next to each other mix to make new colors. For example, what happens when you mix red and yellow?
Animal Vision Experiment: Pretend to be an animal with different types of cones in their eyes. For example, imagine you’re a dog and can only see shades of blue, yellow, and gray. Look at a picture or a scene and describe what you think it would look like to a dog. How would it be different from what you see? Try this with other animals like bees or mantis shrimp and think about how their world might look.
