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Birds perceive colours in categories

Humans perceive colours in categories such as red, even though we can discern red hues including ruby and crimson. It emerges that birds also categorize colours and this affects their colour-discrimination ability.
  1. Almut Kelber

    1. Almut Kelber is in the Department of Biology, Lund University, 22362 Lund, Sweden.

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The amount of information reaching our sensory organs every second would be overwhelming if it were not for our ability to categorize it. Colour perception is a good example of this phenomenon. When we pick strawberries, we can easily discriminate between unripe fruit and fruit of the many different shades of red that indicate ripeness. Writing in Nature, Caves et al.1 report that zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) can also perceive a continuum of colours as belonging to distinct categories, a phenomenon that affects birds’ ability to distinguish similar colours.

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Nature 560, 311-312 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05811-9

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