What Colors Do Mice See?

The mouse is a common rodent and a pest in many parts of the world. They are prolific breeders with one female producing as many as 12 young every few weeks. When mice come into contact with humans they can spread disease, mainly due to the parasites that they carry such as fleas and ticks. However, mice that live away from human settlements exist simply as part of local ecosystems and are no trouble to humans. Mice make a lively and much loved pet in many households, inspiring us to want to understand more about them -- like what they see when they are foraging around for food. Mice, like most mammals, are colorblind to some extent.

  1. Colors

    • Humans and some other primates see using three types of color cones in their retinas; blue, green and red. This gives humans trichromatic vision, allowing us to see millions of different colors. Our ancestors developed this ability to see in full color more that 40 million years ago. Mice however, like most mammals, have dichromatic vision. Their retinas have only two types of color cones -- blue and green. Mouse blue cones in particular, have a shorter wavelength than human blue cones; therefore, unlike us, they can see ultraviolet light.

    Color Perception

    • Mice can see greens and blue-ultraviolet, but questions remain over whether they can really perceive these colors and see any difference between them. Mice see in a similar manner to rats, and recent experiments on rats have shown that by training them and using food as a reward, they can learn to distinguish between the colors.

    Genetic Alteration

    • Researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of California at Santa Barbara, genetically engineered mice to be able to see more of the color spectrum than possible before. A gene was introduced in the mice, that provided them with vision more like humans' trichromatic color vision.

    Scientific Research

    • The researchers performed thousands of color vision tests on these mice, and unaltered control mice, using colored lights on panels. The mice would receive a reward of a tiny drop of soya milk if they could distinguish which light differed in color from others. Mice with the genetic alteration demonstrated their new ability to see reds in the colors spectrum in 80 percent of the tests. The mice could see tones of red and could perceive and interpret the difference between them and other colors.