Giant pandas see in color: study

They may be black and white, but new research at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta shows that giant pandas can see in color.

Graduate researcher Angela Kelling tested the ability of two Zoo Atlanta pandas, Yang Yang and Lun Lun, to see color and found that both pandas were able to discriminate between colors and various shades of gray. The research is published in the psychology journal Learning and Behavior, according to the official website of the Georgia Tech on Friday.

"My study shows that giant pandas have some sort of color vision," said Kelling, graduate student in Georgia Tech's Center for Conservation Behavior in the School of Psychology. "Most likely, their vision is dichromatic, since that seems to be the trend for carnivores."

Vision is not a well-studied aspect of bears, including the giant pandas. It has long been thought that bears have poor vision, perhaps, Kelling said, because they have such excellent senses of smell and hearing.

Some experts have thought that bears must have some sort of color vision as it would help them in identifying edible plants from the inedible ones, although there's been little experimental evidence of this.

Source: Xinhua