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>>ROB DESALLE, CURATOR: A cone cell is a cell in the retina of your eye.
And the field of cone cells can translate all kinds of different colors that we see
in the environment.
The cone cell has an amazing kind of a protein embedded in its membrane called an opsin.
There's a red opsin protein, and a green opsin protein, and a blue opsin protein.
And this protein has a little molecule in it called retinal.
The opsins, are all programmed, so to speak, to toss out the retinal when
they're hit by a specific wavelength of light.
When they toss out this retinal, they send a signal to the cell that then sends a signal
to your nervous system that goes to your brain.
And that's how you interpret the colors.
Some mammals have no color vision whatsoever.
They see things in black and white.
Color vision, more than likely, evolved in primates about 35 million years ago.
Some monkey species have incredibly interesting color vision.
Some monkeys in the population see two colors and other monkeys see three.
So, you have this population of monkeys where one part of it's seeing a completely different
colored world than the other part of it.
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