The development, use, and perception of color is the subject of a new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History called “Language of Color,” which runs until September 2009. 
“Language of Color” examines not just the uses of color for camouflage, mating, and warning, it also examines the structure of color, highlighting how the color blue, for example, is not made from pigments, as yellow and red are, but rather through physical structures that absorb longer wavelengths of light. Similarly, green is most often created by creatures that have yellow pigment augmented by these blue physical structures.
Colors are also viewed differently by different creatures. Some, such as whales, do not have the color vision that humans do; their world is black and white. Other animals, like bees, see colors in the ultraviolet spectrum that humans don’t, perceiving patterns on flowers invisible to the human eye.
Via Translating the color code By Alvin Powell, Harvard News Office
