Colorful Life in the Goldfish Bowl

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Did you ever notice how your photographs sometimes turn out showing different colors than you remember seeing when you took the picture? Florescent lights might make faces look a little green. A tungsten lamp will make everything in a photograph look pinkish. Even though you did not see those colors when you took the picture, they were there and could be measured by the right equipment.

The reason that the colors we see are often different is because our brains have the amazing ability to adjust and correct the colors we see to those colors that are expected. This ability is called color constancy.

More recently, researchers discovered that goldfish not only see color but that their brains also adjust for color constancy. Scientists had always thought that goldfish were too primitive and had brains that were too small to even see color, much less provide color constancy.

There is no such thing as a simple living thing. Nor can living things be arranged on a scale from simple to complex, the way many scientists would like. Color vision and color constancy were not produced by trial and error genetic accidents, they are abilities given by the Creator. He can give these abilities to any creature He wants and has done so, that the entire creation might glorify Him!