Abstract
Despite convincing data collected by microspectrophotometry and molecular biology, rendering sharks colourblind cone monochromats, the question of whether sharks can perceive colour had not been finally resolved in the absence of any behavioural experiments compensating for the confounding factor of brightness. The present study tested the ability of juvenile grey bamboo sharks to perceive colour in an experimental design based on a paradigm established by Karl von Frisch using colours in combination with grey distractor stimuli of equal brightness. Results showed that contrasts but no colours could be discriminated. Blue and yellow stimuli were not distinguished from a grey distractor stimulus of equal brightness but could be distinguished from distractor stimuli of varying brightness. In addition, different grey stimuli were distinguished significantly above chance level from one another. In conclusion, the behavioural results support the previously collected physiological data on bamboo sharks, which mutually show that the grey bamboo shark, like several marine mammals, is a cone monochromate and colourblind.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank S. Braun for animal caretaking, maintenance and repairs and H. Bleckmann for helpful suggestions on the manuscript, logistical as well as financial support. We are specifically grateful to the ‘Haus des Meeres’ in Vienna for supplying the animals used during this study. The research reported herein was performed under the guidelines established by the current German animal protection law.
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Schluessel, V., Rick, I.P. & Plischke, K. No rainbow for grey bamboo sharks: evidence for the absence of colour vision in sharks from behavioural discrimination experiments. J Comp Physiol A 200, 939–947 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0940-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0940-0