What colors can an ant see?

According to Jurgen Ziesmann who cites Heinz Penzlin, and Gustav Fischer, ants can indeed see color. Apparently, ants have 4 different light absorbing pigments while humans only have 3. Scientists feel they can probably see UV light as a color, which is pretty interesting. They figure ants can see the different directions of polarization of light as different colors.

Most insects like bees and wasps cannot see red light, but ants can. It is likely ants can distinguish the colors, red, orange, and yellow.


The brain computes one image after gathering all of the information delivered from all sensory vision cells. No one has any difinitive answers as to how this is done in ants. Therefore it is impossible to tell what the image looks like to an ant.

(Jurgen Ziesmann, Post-doc Biology and Ecological Chemistry, U. Maryland Medical School)

	felixthecat -  4794 pts -  (1 year ago)
	Thank you. I had no idea.

actually ants can see perfectly. ants can see black,red,yellos, and orange.

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