| Colour vision is a remarkable aspect of vision that is only very few
species in the animal kingdom. Try and imagine how it would be to live in a grey world,
unable to experience the marvellous subtle array of colours around you. |
The human colour system uses 3 channels to distinguish the millions of
colours we can see. The colour nerve receptors are called the 'cones' (because they are
cone shaped. Why else?) and are packed mainly into the small area at the centre of the
retina called the fovea. This very tight packing not only gives us our colour vision but
it also gives us the very fine resolution
that we can see. |