At 1:40 PM -0500 11/5/02, Stephen Black wrote:
The other day in class I was discussing colour vision and the fact
that only primates among mammals are trichromats. I mentioned the
theory that this conferred an evolutionary advantage in spotting
tropical fruit (red) among the leaves (green).
A student asked whether fruit-eating bats therefore also had
trichromatic vision. Good question. I said I thought not, because
they were nocturnal, weren't they?
According to an on-line review of the book _Bats_ by Phil Richardson,
I'm wrong. It says "Megabats eat mainly tropical fruit; both their
keen sense of smell and their color vision enable then to detect one
fruiting tree among thousands".
But what this doesn't tell me is whether they're trichromats, which
is what the theory would predict. Further web-searching didn't help.
Anyone know?
Let's see ....
Who was it who knew what it was like to be a bat? ;-)
--
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
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