Why can humans see colours when a large source of light is present, but when there’s very little light we can only see black and white?
In: Biology
We have two different types of light detecting neurons in our retina, rods and cones. The cones comes in three different types, long, medium and short, for different colors of light. But because they only work on specific colors of light and relatively poorly at that they require a certain amount of light to detect anything at all. However the rods are much better at detecting light at low levels. But there is only one type of rods for all colors of light. So you can not distinguish between different colors with your rods. So in low light conditions your cones are not able to see anything and you will be relying on your rods to see. But this makes you completely color blind. The distribution of rods on your retina is also very different so you get a much lower resolution vision, however the rods provides you with wider vision.
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